


A Tear in the Open

by simplesetgo



Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-06-20
Updated: 2011-10-31
Packaged: 2017-10-20 14:07:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplesetgo/pseuds/simplesetgo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a distant future, Cara and Kahlan are strangers thrust out of their element and forced to work together to survive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Preface:  
> This is a survival/sci-fi AU fic. While I believe fantasy and sci-fi are more similar than they are different (and are often lumped together in bookstores and the like), I understand that plenty of people are fans of one and not the other. The purpose of this lengthy note is to clue readers in as to what lays in store for them so you all can decide whether you can take the science fiction aspects in stride. If you think you probably can, I'd encourage you to jump ahead and start reading because the following bit contains slight spoilers regarding content and tone.
> 
> The story at the heart of this fic is that of humanity vs. environment, not humanity vs. humanity. There is no big bad villain, no object they have to find to save the world. Cara and Kahlan are going to be working to survive on an isolated and unfamiliar planet that may or may not be hostile to them. Think Castaway/Hatchet/Mysterious Island more than, but containing pieces of, Star Wars/Star Trek/Battlestar Galactica. Also, I feel it's safe to say the harder sci-fi is only present in this, the first couple chapters.
> 
> So, herein you will find: spaceships, datapads, wooshing door panels, a polite ship's computer, and semi-alien planets.
> 
> You will (probably) not find: robots, monsters, rogue AIs, copious made-up words, sentient aliens, or laser pistols.
> 
> If all that sounds interesting to you, enjoy!

They brought her out in chains.

“She’s sedated,” Kahlan observed, looking carefully into green eyes with a furrowed brow. The last time she’d seen them, they were narrowed in naked fury. Now, hazed over, they blinked at her lazily.

“Yes, Arbiter.” The man was openly dressed in the manner of law enforcement—a brave thing to do, here. “Just now. She struggled.”

“I see. Place her aboard. Secure her in the holding compartment.”

“Yes, Arbiter.”

It was a hellhole, this planet. This was the place people came to hide from their past, from debts and people and choices they’d made. Even in the sterile air of the spaceport she could sense the desperation, like heaviness in the air. The grungy streets were narrow, the atmosphere incredibly thick with pollution, and venturing outside one could find themselves quickly lost in the maze of dark skyscrapers. But hiding from an Arbiter was futile. This Cara should’ve known that.

Kahlan strapped herself into the cockpit and powered up. The soft blue glow of the instrument panel surrounded her. She sighed upon realizing just how much it felt like home, this comfortable pilot’s seat and distanced hum of the thrusters behind her. Chasing criminals across the galaxy was lonely work.

She donned her headset and settled back. “Control, this is Arbiter Kahlan Amnell requesting a priority exit.”

_“Airspace not clear. Please wait for clearance.”_

Kahlan closed her eyes. If she had to spend one more moment on this cursed planet— “Control, this is _Arbiter_ Kahlan Amnell _demanding_ priority exit.”

_“Ah—please stand by.”_

She slid the thrusters to half and the low hum became a roar. When clearance came a minute later, she was already two miles up from the surface.

****

Once near the first jump point, Kahlan brought up a star map, flicking through thousands of parsecs with her fingertips. The shifting points of light enveloped her hand, each one a sun with some semblance of a solar system. Target found, she tapped her index finger on the star and it changed from white to blinking red. “Asix, set a course.”

The ship’s computer chirped at her. “Done, Arbiter.”

Kahlan paused. “Asix, am I alive?”

“Yes, Arbiter.”

“Asix, am I dead?”

“No, Arbiter.”

She sighed.

The jump point was still an hour away, maybe a bit less. Kahlan left the cockpit to head to the galley. Her ship was small and designed to carry one person and a prisoner—an Arbiter and her captive. They could be considered glorified shuttles, really, if not for the additions made. Basic weapons and shields and, inside, the equipment necessary to let an Arbiter track someone in deep space for months at a time without docking to refuel or resupply. There was also the small matter of the jump drive necessary for intergalactic travel.

Luckily, in her career so far, she’d never had to stay out longer than a couple weeks. Even Cara, her hardest track yet, had simply jumped from system to system, planet to planet. Deep space, the dead and disturbingly empty space between galaxies, was the refuge of the truly gone.

She stopped by the holding compartment on the way to make something to eat. She placed her palm on the panel beside the door and it hissed open, beeping in recognition. Kahlan leaned against the frame. The woman was still out cold, chin to her chest, but she showed signs of waking in the form of twitching fingers, a hand clenching suddenly before loosening. She wore some kind of uniform, an insignia on her lapel that Kahlan didn’t recognize. Her cleavage was on clear display; somehow, Kahlan doubted the drastically low cut of her top was standard issue.

Steel restraints held her upright against the wall, thick bars loose across her limbs and torso, but they were the failsafe. The real restraints, the ones the woman would feel pressing gently but firmly against her when she woke, were only indicated by a soft light emanating from under the bars. It made her golden skin glow, brightened her blonde hair. She was strikingly beautiful, this Cara, and incredibly dangerous.

Kahlan, on the other hand, was hungry.

****

Disaster struck six hours and three jump points later.

She’d been careful, as always. She’d researched her target, stayed out of sight and out of mind of everyone that mattered before she struck. But apparently she hadn’t been careful enough and someone was considerably invested in Cara’s freedom. Because just short of the fourth jump, a Dread-class battlecruiser dropped out of the vast darkness right on top of her.

The thing was half a mile long and bristling with every weapon imaginable, built entirely in space and designed explicitly to take out other spacecraft. She craned her neck up from the cockpit window. Her only hope was to race to the jump point. A warning shot fired across her bow, a beam of bright energy that could have ripped her ship in half, unprepared as it was. She didn’t even bother responding to the hail on her comm demanding the surrender of her prisoner. “Asix, raise shields and override for ordinance evasion only,” she said calmly. “I need the jump point on my display.”

“Done, Arbiter.”

Kahlan slid the eyepiece down from her brow and gripped the yoke with white knuckles. As far as the warship knew she could be away from the cockpit, but she couldn’t drift all the way to the jump point at this speed without being tethered and boarded. If she changed speed, the game would be up.

She let herself drift a little closer. Ten tense minutes passed. Three more warning shots. Then she spotted a small, dark shape leave the belly of the cruiser, barely standing out against the blackness of space. It could be a fighter or boarding vessel. Either way she was out of time. “Asix.” She took a breath. “Let’s go.”

Her body was slammed to the chair as the thrusters thundered to full strength—inertial dampeners only did so much. She gritted her teeth. Her pulse fluttered wildly as she waited for the barrage of weapons fire. Relaxing her grip on the yoke slightly, she tried to remember what she was taught. “Light as a feather,” she whispered to herself. “Asix! Time to target?”

“One minute, Arbiter.”

Then it started. The underbelly of the battlecruiser lit up and her last hope was dashed. They didn’t necessarily want Cara alive—they just didn’t want Cara in Kahlan’s hands.

She set a tight and unpredictable pattern, dodging and weaving only as much as necessary to avoid wasting valuable time strafing. Pulses of energy fell around her like some kind of deadly rain, colored white and red. She watched her shields start to drop, slowly but surely, as hits were absorbed.

“Incoming seekers, Arbiter,” Asix chirped. “Evading.”

Kahlan tightened her stomach muscles in preparation. Seconds later, her world turned inside out as Asix seized control long enough to spin the ship in an impossibly tight turn, and then another, and then another upside down that sent the blood rushing from her head. When the gravity-induced haze darkening her vision cleared, she found herself sailing through the cloudy trail of four deadly missiles streaking away into space. Any one of them would have dropped her shields to nothing.

“Well done,” Kahlan muttered, blinking furiously. “I think.”

“Thank you, Arbiter.”

“Time?”

“Twenty seconds, Arbiter.”

The rain of weapons fire continued, lighting up both her display and her open view. Kahlan did her best, but her ship was not designed to withstand such an assault. She wasn’t going to make it. Her shields passed below a quarter strength and kept dropping.

“Asix, probability of success for an early jump,” she shouted.

“Distance, Arbiter?”

“Here!”

“Thirty percent, Arbiter.”

Kahlan watched the jump point come closer in her display. She watched her shields dropping. She forced herself to wait, forced herself to continue her evasive pattern when all she wanted to do was fly straight ahead and open herself up wide to predictive fire. Five seconds felt like an hour.

“Here!”

“Fifty percent, Arbiter.”

“Here?”

“Eighty-five percent, Arbiter.”

Kahlan counted to calm herself, watching her shields fall. Ten percent. Five. “Asix, zero-v align and jump!”

Her body was jerked forward harshly as the ship came to an abrupt halt. Zero velocity. Rotated to the side and up. Aligned to some distant jump point, a path laid out carefully between the stars. And right when her shields dropped, the purple glow from her jump drive began to envelop the ship, forming the bubble of spacetime that would carry her.

She almost made a clean getaway. Almost.

All it took was one shot, one direct hit. She couldn’t see it or hear it but she felt the jolt as the stars blurred to the side, shifting almost imperceptibly. “No,” Kahlan whispered as those stars faded, as her ship hurtled across thousands of parsecs of space in a matter of seconds.

Those seconds stretched as Kahlan’s mind raced. The entire reason such points existed was because they were known to form a network of safe paths of travel. Being a bit off position shouldn't have mattered, but the hit had knocked her jump direction off a couple degrees. Those degrees would result in arriving a great distance off-course at best—and at worst, could send her straight through some sun on the way.

She’d seen a recording of the resulting carnage, once. The unlucky ship wasn’t much larger than hers, but going as fast as it was, well. There were times when the laws of the universe made for a certain ugliness.

Kahlan closed her eyes.

Waited.


	2. Chapter 2

Cara was fairly certain she was going to die.

First there was the crackling sound of shields absorbing energy weapons. Then there was a certain maneuver that had her dry heaving, muscles pulling against the restraints pinning her to the cold metal wall. Then, a deafening screech that sounded far too close for comfort. She knew a hull breach when she heard one, but at least her compartment wasn’t leaking atmosphere.

Yet.

Disturbing silence followed. Thrusters dead, there was only the incredibly soft hum of life support pumping air through vents in the floor. There was no way to tell what had happened. Had the shot destroyed engine power? Or had the ship jumped, saving them from further fire? Were they adrift and defenseless, locked in someone’s targeting sights?

Was that someone pressing the trigger right now?

Cara sighed. If they were, they were taking their time.

And then, the ship began to shake rather violently. One second, supreme silence. The next, her world was a chaotic, vibrating mess. Cara clenched her teeth and balled her fists. A jump it was, then. Straight into the atmosphere of some planet.

Well. _Someone_ was a terrible pilot.

The shaking was getting worse. It wasn’t that dying bothered Cara, really. She’d been on the run too long and she was tired. It was dying in restraints, unable to stand freely on her own two feet.

Insulting.

She closed her eyes and listened. The vibrations slowed, the tremors becoming more pronounced. The atmosphere was growing thicker. As it would closer to the planet’s surface.

They were going to crash, then. Cara nodded to herself, and opened her eyes.

Soon voices began whispering loudly from the bottom of the hull.

No, not voices. Something soft scratching at the underbelly of the ship as it skimmed over…

Vegetation of some kind. The tops of trees?

Given Cara’s current impression of the pilot’s skills, if they kept going down they were probably going to fly straight into one.

Cara tightened every muscle in her body in preparation. And then she felt the ship rip apart with the squeal of shearing metal and she was sent spinning, probably all the way back up into space in her little cell, all by itself. Maybe the ship had exploded.

Well that’s what it felt like, anyway.

But there was a second jolt and the spinning reversed, and this time things actually began to slow. There was clawing on the hull—ground and brush, or maybe rock—and then, finally, against all odds, in spite of the Arbiter’s fierce attempts to kill them both, Cara and her little cell tipped and came to a complete and resting halt. Sideways.

Hopelessly dizzy, she smiled, just a little, letting the corner of her mouth quirk up. She’d survived worse and she would live to survive worse things yet.

Her face fell just as suddenly. This was an Arbiter’s vessel—crewed by one woman. If that woman died during the crash, there would be no one to let her free.

She would die to thirst.

In restraints.

Cara moaned in frustration, allowing herself one violent and fruitless push against the pressure holding her still. She should probably cry out for help.

But there was no way she was crying out for help. She’d never done it in her life, not once.

She should, now, though. Probably.

But then again, this holding compartment was probably soundproof.

Cara rolled her eyes and filled her lungs. “Arbiter!”

She waited a moment, then said, a little more quietly, “Help.”

There. Now she could wait in peace, knowing she’d done everything possible to save herself.

****

It was a solid ten minutes before the panel slid open with a hiss. A woman crouched and stepped through the sideways door. She was dressed in flight pants and a tight, black tank top. Her dark hair was pulled back in a long ponytail. Datapad in hand, she crossed her arms at Cara from across the room, like she was expecting her to say thank you. “You’re standing on the wall,” said Cara.

“We crashed,” the woman replied.

“I noticed.”

“I’m sure.”

Cara smirked. “So. You’re the terrible pilot who jumped straight into a planet and then flew into a tree or something.”

“Your friends shot a hole in my ship. Engine compartment; my Asix sealed it off so we didn’t depressurize but I lost almost all thruster control.”

“Impossible.”

The woman stepped closer. “I’m sorry?”

“I don’t have any friends,” Cara told her.

“You had help running from me.”

Cara laughed. “No I didn’t. And I was running from them more than from you. Now, do you mind?” She nodded at her awkwardly suspended body.

The Arbiter stepped closer still, until she was right in front of Cara. Cara meaningfully cocked her head, attempting to look at her right-side-up. She raised her brow expectantly.

“I might mind,” the woman said smoothly. “Are you going to behave?”

“I’m not a child,” snarled Cara. “We’re in this together. I know that. Now let me down.”

This close, Cara hadn’t looked her in the eye. Because she knew what Arbiters could do. She’d heard the stories, she’d even seen it done once. Make eye contact with an Arbiter and that was their way in; they could plant ideas in your head, make you do things, make you tell them whatever they wanted to know. It’s what made Arbiters so uniquely suited to hunting people. Once Cara had heard one of them was tracking her, every single person who saw her face became a liability, became part of a trail she left behind.

She was clearly waiting. Cara sighed and looked at the woman’s eyes—she didn’t have all day and she really wanted to be let down. They were pure blue. Beautiful, really, like the rest of her. Until they flashed black, the pupils dilating and whites clouding with darkness. Panic rippled down Cara’s spine, but she blinked and it was over. They were blue again.

Cara knew she shouldn’t have been able to blink. The Arbiter was showing off, making sure Cara knew her place. Just flexing her power. Cara rolled her own eyes. “I get it. If I’m bad you’ll cook my brain until I’m your mindless, drooling slave. I’ve heard the stories.”

“What did you do? To get me sent after you.”

“You don’t know?” returned Cara, genuinely surprised.

“They don’t tell us the crime. Just everything we need to know about the criminal.”

Cara deliberately held her gaze so the Arbiter could be sure she was telling the truth. “I killed a lot of people at once. Back when I was working for the government I’m running from. I have no intention of hurting or killing you.”

“Until we’re back up and running.”

Cara shrugged as best she could. “Until then.”

She had little doubt that if she explained further, if she fully confessed her great crime, she wouldn’t need to worry about her mind being destroyed by the Arbiter’s gaze. She’d probably be throttled to death where she was.

In restraints, which was unacceptable.

“I’m Kahlan,” the woman told her. She tapped the datapad and Cara’s restraints snapped open. Cara grunted as she fell to the wall in a heap, and got up slowly. Kahlan was already leaving the cell; she bent over double to crawl through the door. Cara watched. This Kahlan had a rather nice body.

“I’m—”

“Cara, I know,” Kahlan called back. “Come on, I’m still not sure where we are.”

Of course she knew. Cara shook her head at herself and followed the Arbiter.

Navigating the interior of a ship resting sideways was nothing if not annoying. Emergency lighting flooded everything with a red tint. The corridor was built narrow and the resulting height was such that neither of them could figure out whether to hunker down and walk or crawl on their hands and knees. After a few awkward, shuffling steps Kahlan opted for crawling. Cara dropped to her knees behind her because hey, the view wasn’t bad.

They reached the cockpit a little too soon. Kahlan wrangled herself over the pilot’s seat with the help of the straps. She cocked her head to read better; her ponytail hung loosely to the side as she pulled up a map on the display. “Your Asix…” Cara began.

“Out of commission. Damaged in the crash, I think.”

“I see.”

She watched Kahlan flick and pan her way through the star charts, zooming out to see the region they’d landed in.

Cara didn’t recognize any of it. “Further,” she urged.

Soon the entire galaxy was spinning slowly on the display. Cara’s jaw tightened and Kahlan sighed. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

A blinking dot indicated their position on the outer edge of the fourth arm. Sparsely populated, it might as well be dead space for all that was out there.

Well, out here.

“Distress beacon?” wondered Cara.

“Active; I checked. But the nearest relay station…”

Cara’s knuckles rapped against the metal frame of the pilot’s seat while Kahlan tapped out a calculation.

“Three months just for our signal to reach it,” Kahlan concluded.

“And then more for anyone to get here.”

Kahlan swallowed, audibly. “Yeah.”

“Then we’re fixing your ship.”

Kahlan nodded. “I like that plan.”

“Do we know anything about this planet?”

“We’re in Theta sector, so nobody’s bothered to name it. Or map it. Or anything else, really.” Kahlan lifted a hand toward the cockpit window. “What you see is what I know.”

Cara peered out to see what looked like any given greenwood forest. Well, except for the rather large trees. Definitely larger than normal. Far, far, larger. There was nothing in the way of underbrush; they stood alone, shooting up from the forest floor like great pillars. She leaned forward and craned her neck looking up. “At least the sky is blue.”

“Yeah. That and green vegetation means oxygen, nitrogen. Maybe breathable. Asix could tell us for sure.”

Kahlan started at a sudden beep. Cara smirked.

“Atmosphere is compatible with human physiology, Arbiter.”

“Asix, when did you come back online?”

“Twenty seconds ago, Arbiter.”

“Male voice,” Cara observed, leaning idly against the seat. “He sounds hot. Lonely, are we, Arbiter?”

Kahlan shifted a little. “No.”

Cara cleared her throat. “That compartment I was in, is it soundproof?”

“Yeah.” Kahlan looked back at her. “Why, were you yelling for help?”

“No,” Cara said, looking away. “Never have, never will.”

After all, she hadn’t really yelled the word. She decided her flawless record stood.

****

Pushing herself out of the hatch, she breathed deep in the warm alien air. Asix had told them it was oxygen-rich, more so than most inhabited planets. She could feel it, it seemed, flooding her lungs. It made her feel alive after the stale, recycled air of the ship.

It was a bit of jump to the ground. Cara noticed from her light landing that gravity was a bit lower than average. Springy, green moss grew underfoot, forming a thin carpet on the forest floor. She stretched her arms and looked around. It was the same in every direction she could see: massive trees soaring hundreds of feet up, their trunks as thick around as Kahlan’s ship.

Cara backed away and canted her head. It was the first time she’d seen an Arbiter vessel this close up. Fully conscious, anyway. Colored slate gray and white, it looked like it couldn’t decide whether it was trying to be a cargo freighter or a sleek fighter. There were rounded lines and curves, but it was barely aerodynamic—obviously designed mainly for ferrying an Arbiter from planet to planet in search of their prey.

It had skidded across the forest floor, leaving large, ugly gouge marks in the dirt, and ended up on its side, tipped over to rest neatly against one of the countless trees. The exposed underbelly was covered with scratches and marks. Also, either the left wing was magically buried into the dirt in its entirety or it was missing.

Well. The latter would explain the shearing sound she’d heard.

Kahlan dropped to the ground beside her, squinting as she looked her ship up and down. “Oh,” she said.

“Like I said. Right into a tree.”

“Shut up, Cara.”

“Your wings. Well, wing. Does it fold?”

“Yeah, they fold up for.” She paused, cocking her head as she looked up at where the tree and her ship met. “Oh. Help me back up?”

Cara did so, then stepped well away and waited. She could see Kahlan working through the cockpit window, though there was a fierce glare from the suns.

Suns? Cara looked up, stepping to the side until she could see clearly through the canopy of leaves. A binary star system. One was larger and darker, a red to the smaller one’s white.

A mechanical noise stole her attention. The wing extending out began to fold up close to the ship’s body, like it would for travel in space. When it met the tree there was a fierce grinding that made Cara wince. The ship shuddered as its wingtip scraped down and pushed it away from the trunk, and then with a great crash, it fell right side up. There was a rather pronounced dent in the hull where it had collided with the trunk.

Cara narrowed her eyes, looking carefully at the pilot’s chair in the cockpit. Empty.

Kahlan popped up beside it a moment later, a broad grin on her face.

****

“So what’s our situation?” She leaned her back against the ship’s hull. It was still warm from their less-than-intentional fall through the atmosphere.

Kahlan hesitated. “I’m not outfitted for deep space so we don’t have the supplies to last three or four months. We’ll have to find edible flora nearby. Maybe there’s—”

“I thought we were fixing the ship,” Cara interrupted. “Right?”

Kahlan shook her head. “Can’t.”

“Can’t?” Cara tensed, her heart suddenly pounding. “What do you mean, ‘can’t’? We’re stuck here?”

“Did you notice the left wing got torn off?” said Kahlan quietly. “We don’t even know where it is.”

“We’ll find it and re-attach it,” Cara said stubbornly.

“With what? Vine rope?” She grabbed at Cara’s arm. Her grip was like iron and Cara let herself be led to the back of the ship. “Crawl under the middle. Look up. Tell me what you see.”

Already a little uneasy, Cara dropped to the ground and twisted her way under the hull a little ways. “Oh, bad,” she muttered once she spotted what Kahlan wanted her to see. “Daylight! I see daylight.”

That shot had gone straight through Kahlan’s ship. In the top and out the bottom. Or vice versa. It didn’t matter. Cara crawled back out.

“You weren’t just looking through the ship,” Kahlan told her. “I checked the compartment. The shot melted straight through the thruster engine. I didn’t have much control because the auxiliary only gives five percent power.”

“No,” Cara groaned. “No, no, no.” There was no way to repair that kind of damage. “We’re stuck.”

Kahlan nodded. “I haven’t seen any animal life, but it looks like night’s coming. We should inventory our supplies and I’ll have Asix run an exhaustive check of the ship’s systems. We’re in this for the long haul. Come on.”

Cara stood still, gazing out into the unremarkable wilderness. It didn’t look that dangerous.

Kahlan waited a moment. “Lock the hatch when you come in, then,” she said, and turned away, stepping inside.

“Yeah,” Cara murmured.


	3. Chapter 3

The hatch locked shut behind Cara with a heavy mechanical click. Emergency lighting was gone; the two gleaming corridors in front of her were lit with the harsh white light normally found on such craft. It was supposed to imitate daylight. She found it annoyingly bright.

There was a corridor leading straight ahead and one off to her left. It seemed a different ship right-side-up; she had no idea where to head. Cara took a step forward, stopped, and wheeled to head down the side corridor, toward the back of the ship. Met with a door, she tapped the panel and was somewhat surprised when it slid open. She supposed lax security on the rest of the ship was suitable, given the likelihood of escaping the holding cell.

It was the engine room: tiled metal plates formed a bare flooring, hazard and warning signs were plastered everywhere, and an active power core hummed loudly where it was seated against the near wall. There was other various machinery but the massive thruster engine dominated the space, reaching floor to ceiling. The only indication a hole was shot through it were sparking fuses and a blackened exhaust valve. After looking around, Cara cracked open a supply canister secured to the wall, found a heavy wrench, and hammered repeatedly at the fuses until they were dead, dark, and silent; there was a small mountain of fuel containers netted close by on the wall and Cara would rather not be blown into pieces in the middle of the night by some impossible coincidence.

A quick survey found nothing else out of order. She left, and this time turned to head down the other corridor, cutting across the width of the ship. She passed the galley and her holding cell, and a right turn took her past Kahlan’s room and straight to the cockpit. So that was the ship, then. Explored in a matter of two minutes.

Backtracking, she found Kahlan in her quarters. The door hissed open with a tap and Kahlan looked up, eyes wide as if caught. “Quite a mess,” observed Cara. The Arbiter’s belongings were scattered all over the room, a result of the violent crash. Wall drawers were open, contents emptied, and the open closet had vomited clothing in a curious pattern across the floor. If the furniture wasn’t built securely into the ship itself there was no telling what the room might look like.

“The galley is worse,” Kahlan told her.

“I’ll get started on that, then.”

“But you don’t know where anything goes.”

Leaning in the doorway, Cara cocked her hip. “Or I could stand here and watch you pack away that lacy lingerie piece by piece. Actually, why do you even have lingerie? Have many…suitors?”

Kahlan pursed her lips. “Okay, have fun with the galley. And thank you.”

Cara stepped back, trailing her fingers across the door frame. “Also, fuses were sparking in the engine room. I fixed them.”

Kahlan appeared impressed. She would be less so if she was aware of Cara’s method, no doubt. “Oh. Thank you, Cara.”

“You don’t have to say that. In fact, I’d rather you not.”

“Alright,” said Kahlan. She looked at Cara, curious. Her eyes turned intense suddenly and Cara’s heart sped up until Kahlan looked down. Cara stepped back, the door slid shut in front of her, and she immediately felt safer.

****

Cara’s back was already protesting the endless picking-up of small objects when Kahlan joined her. Wordlessly, they got the galley back in order together. The table bolted in the middle had two benches—room for at least four people. Cara barely resisted asking how often she had company. Instead, she collapsed onto one bench and rested her chin on folded arms. “So,” she began as Kahlan took a seat across from her, slouching in weariness. “How long will everything last?”

“That power core is good for a couple hundred years,” Kahlan said. “So no need to worry about that. The water recycler’s really efficient so our current supply could last about a year.”

Cara waited, sitting up to look at her.

“…And Asix says the ship’s systems were relatively undamaged in the crash.”

“And how much food did we just put away?” Cara asked bluntly.

“A couple week’s worth.”

“A couple weeks,” repeated Cara. “Two weeks? We’re going to be here for months. My appetite for tree bark and moss has never been exactly strong.”

“We have no idea what’s out there. There could be…”

“An endless source of food for us, or hungry wildlife that considers us food.”

Kahlan nodded.

“Well.” Cara stood slowly, hand on the small of her back. “We’ll find out tomorrow. There’s a cot or something that folds down from the wall? In that cell.”

“Yeah, it’s that latch by…the…thing. Um, it’s easy to find.”

“Right.” Cara grabbed a large can of something that looked edible and headed for the door. “I’ll go and find it, then.”

****

The holding compartment was strangely spacious for what it was. Cara had plenty of room to pace back and forth from cot to commode. In the last few hours she’d come up with plenty of reasons she should feel uneasy: the ship could still blow up from some latent buildup of something, they could be squashed by the giant foot of some immense creature in the middle of the night, or they could have inhaled some deadly virus Asix couldn’t detect. Last but not least, the Arbiter could decide at any given moment that Cara wasn’t worth the risk and would be more valuable to her as a mindless slave. Cara sincerely wished the door locked from the inside.

She flopped down on the cot for the fourth time, staring up at the dimly lit ceiling. Maybe this wasn’t so bad; she wasn’t a fugitive anymore. She didn’t have to worry about being chased; no-one would find her here. It could be a reprieve, time to catch her breath. Until they were rescued, or miraculously found a way off—then it would all start over again.

Cara wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep when she heard it. A soft pitter-patter, like footsteps, out in the corridor. Her eyes flew open and she listened: there was silence, then more silence, and then she heard it for sure. Louder this time. She sprang from the cot. Her hand reached reflexively to her hip, finding nothing. With a soft curse she grabbed the unopened can from under the cot, hefting the weight in her hand. Hopefully heavy enough to deal some blunt damage. There was no telling what was outside that door. Cara stared at it as she stalked across the room. Pressing her ear to the cold surface, she closed her eyes.

They were quick footsteps, close together. Either a small creature with a small gait or a large creature with…lots of legs. Cara shuddered—there was a sharpness to them she hadn’t heard from the cot. Claws.

They were softening; the creature was getting further away. Now was her chance. She tapped the door open, wincing at the hydraulic hiss. Slowly, she stepped out. There was nothing in sight down either corridor, but there was that third she couldn’t see, leading to the engine room. She headed slowly for the corner, eyes locked to the floor where it could jump out at any moment.

Cara didn’t expect the small, dark blur on the ceiling that stopped cold when it saw her. Cara froze in turn. Hanging by black claws from the lights was a…ball of dark gray fur. Cara squinted and made out four legs, green eyes, and a leathery head wearing a sinister expression. At least it didn’t have wings. The thing narrowed its eyes back at her. Cara rolled the can in her fist, then slowly drew her arm back. She had confidence in her aim.

The creature cocked its head at the movement, then opened its mouth and shrieked. Loudly. Cara’s skin crawled.


	4. Chapter 4

Kahlan woke with a start, sitting up as the sound faded. It took a moment for her to recognize it. She gasped, and with a cursory glance at the empty metal cage next to her bed, she was up and running. She nearly slammed the door control into the wall, but it slid open at the same exact speed, unhurried. As soon as she was in the corridor, she heard a racket around the corner. Someone yelling—hopefully Cara, given the alternatives—and the sounds of a scuffle. Kahlan ran. Just before she broke the corner, there was a thud, a groan, and a large can of something came rolling across her path, hitting the wall with a clank.

She found Cara collapsed on her belly, limbs sprawled, with a mass of dark fur latched onto her, stretching from the nape of her neck to the small of her back. Panting, Cara turned her head, eyes wide. Bared, sharp fangs were sinking into the back of her neck. “Get this thing off me!” she shouted. “I can’t move!”

Kahlan sighed.

Impossibly, Cara’s eyes widened further still.

“Sib! Go to your cage!”

Kahlan’s voice cracked like a whip in the small corridor. Sib leapt from Cara’s back, claws skittering on the flooring, then shot down the hallway in a blur to vanish inside Kahlan’s room.

“What the hell was that?” hissed Cara.

“That was Sib.” Kahlan knelt beside Cara, brow furrowed as she examined Cara’s back and neck. “I picked him up on a little planet in Sigma sector. His kind are rather misunderstood there. His own home and they just—”

“That…thing is your pet?” Cara interrupted. “You didn’t think that would be good to mention? What did it do to me?”

“He injected a paralytic into your spinal column. That’s why you can’t move below the neck. He was about to feed on you, but you’ll be fine. I promise. Even if he had, you’d still be fine—they don’t kill their prey. Can you feel these?” Carefully, Kahlan prodded at the four puncture marks on the back of Cara’s neck. Cara grunted. Kahlan moved her hand down Cara’s back. The material of the uniform was smooth, close fitted, and visibly unmarred, but she knew that the tips of Sib’s claws were so fine they’d go right through the threads and not leave a mark; functionally, a very deep pinprick. Kahlan found where each paw had latched onto her skin by the loudness of Cara’s guttural protests.

“Okay,” Kahlan sighed. “There’s an aid kit in the galley. Let’s go.” She made to pick Cara up; the woman was a little smaller than her and with the lower gravity it shouldn’t have been hard.

“Stop!” yelled Cara. “Don’t you pick me up. I will not be carried like a child.”

“You’re hurt. I’m just going to—”

“No. You’re not. Try and I’ll…”

Kahlan sat back. “Do what? Bite me?”

Cara glared at her, her lips pressed in a thin line. Kahlan couldn’t help the small, sudden smile that crept onto her features. It was more than a little amusing for one so utterly helpless to be so defiant. Cara scowled. Kahlan laughed, a quick bark before she huffed it back, settling into a wide grin.

“Not funny,” stated Cara.

“It’s a little funny.” Kahlan nodded at the can against the wall. “I see you prepared yourself for battle with a quality weapon.”

Cara’s mouth twisted into a smirk.

“The deadliest can of beans the ‘verse has ever seen,” continued Kahlan, her voice almost singsong.

“Enough,” Cara groaned. “I’ll let you drag me, I suppose, if you swear not to say another word about the can.”

Kahlan stood, gamely taking her arms and pulling her body the few steps into the galley. “You’re supposed to heat them up, you know. They would taste far better.”

“How was I supposed to know?” Cara let herself be settled sitting up against the wall before Kahlan began rummaging for the aid kit. “I’ve not exactly spent my life cooking for myself.”

“I see. Can you move yet? Should be over soon.” Watching the blonde struggle, tight-lipped, to force her limbs to movement, Kahlan found the humor gone. Sib was going to be enjoying the comfort of his cage for the foreseeable future instead of having the run of Kahlan’s quarters.

“Nothing yet. But they’re tingling,” said Cara. “Like needles pricking.”

Kahlan sat down on the floor beside her with the supplies. “Close, then. I’m sorry about Sib, Cara. Really. Something must have hit the latch on his cage and damaged it, and I guess he escaped my quarters when I went in for the night.”

“Poor thing,” Cara said drily. “He’s had to endure your flying far longer than me.”

Kahlan sighed. “Could we give that a rest? I outflew a solid sixty seconds of full weapons assault from a Dread-class battlecruiser to save our lives.”

“I could do that all day,” sniffed Cara. She paused, tilting her head a little. “But not many people can.”

It was a compliment of sorts, Kahlan realized, or at least an acknowledgement. “So what were you?” she asked suddenly. “That uniform—”

“Part of my attempt to blend in on that filthy planet. The uniform I wore in earnest…it was a little different.”

Kahlan nodded, and waited; no explanation or elaboration followed. She was intensely curious, not the least because of the blonde’s hesitation to speak of her past, but she was also disciplined. She wouldn’t push Cara; the risk of setting things off to a bad start was too great. This chapter of her life could become a far worse hell if she and Cara became…irritated with each other.

Not that such a fate was at all avoidable. Kahlan simply preferred it to be the exception, not the rule.

“What about you?” said Cara, as if she’d just shared her life story and now Kahlan owed her in turn. “What’s it like being a glorified bounty hunter?”

Kahlan resisted the urge to snap at her, to tell her that Arbiters were held to high standards, that their work was important, that they played a key part in keeping the system free of the worst examples of humanity. Instead, she smiled. “Satisfying,” she answered. Cara crossed her arms, clearly disappointed in her attempt to goad the Arbiter. And Kahlan did feel rather satisfied. “Okay,” she said. “I need to get at your back, so.”

The blonde looked down at her arms in surprise, then flexed them in front of her. “Oh. It’s gone.” She frowned. “Legs…”

“Will take a little bit longer,” Kahlan supplied.

With a sigh of longsuffering, Cara shifted herself free of the wall and began to undress her top. Kahlan’s eyes skittered nervously around the galley before she turned her head away, setting her chin in her hand.

“Really?” Cara said, and the rustle of fabric stopped cold. “Really.”

“Really what?” Kahlan replied, promptly looking back to Cara. “I was…thinking of Sib.”

There was a glint in the blonde’s eye, like she’d just accepted a challenge. Kahlan didn’t move a muscle, setting her forcibly idle gaze on the bars of the table in front of them. After a quick zipping sound, Cara pulled her top over her head and shook her hair out. She’d been gracious enough to turn mostly away, but the very full curve of the side of her breast was clearly visible in the periphery of Kahlan’s sight. With a seemingly magnetic force, Kahlan’s eyes shifted fully to the half-naked form sitting up before her. The sensual curve of her back, the feminine set of her shoulders and the narrowing above her hips; they stole more of Kahlan’s attention than she would admit. The words she’d decided on earlier came back to mind: beautiful, and dangerous. Cara’s hair whipped when she quickly twisted to look at Kahlan. The blonde had the nerve to raise an eyebrow at her. Kahlan cleared her throat. “I was looking for the claw marks,” she explained, then wished she hadn’t felt the need to explain at all.

Cara hummed and turned back away. She bowed her head, holding shoulder-length hair to the side to give Kahlan access to the wound at the base of her neck. Kahlan opened the kit and went to work. While cleaning the injury before applying medical gel, she noticed a deathly stillness had come over Cara. She leaned back and felt relieved that Cara’s sides showed the movement of breath. Biting back inquiry, Kahlan continued her work, applying the fast-acting healing agent to the four gathered puncture marks.

“I was a commander in a privatized military,” Cara said suddenly. The tension in her promptly evaporated; the blonde even rolled her shoulders a bit.

“What military? Whose?” Kahlan asked quietly, once it seemed that Cara was waiting for her somehow.

“The Foundation,” said Cara.

Kahlan couldn’t hide her sharp intake of breath. By name, the Foundation was a vast governmental entity, sprawling across the entire system to encompass its many galaxies and nearly countless worlds. When it first became possible to travel such impossible distances, when that technology began to spread as a simple result of its use, when there began to form a rudimentary coalition of worlds, the Foundation was born—not out of necessity so much as opportunity. Every planet, every sector, every galaxy, was eventually given a choice of whether to succumb to the Foundation’s oversight. Most did—those that weren’t suffered it regardless.

If power corrupts, then the possession of power over so many lives sparked a corruption so total, so complete, that it took less than a standard year for the Foundation to shift from a well-meaning, and even appreciated, organization to one resented, and soon hated, by the very worlds that gave it such power. But the monster was born and it quickly grew far too many heads to be killed, so each world accorded themselves varying measures of reclaimed independence—as much as they could without risking the Foundation’s wrath.

That Cara was a part of this vast machine shouldn’t have surprised her. The Foundation was comprised of an immense number of people, no small percentage of which were employed in their private military. As an Arbiter, Kahlan had had plenty of contact with the Foundation in her years of work—usually less than pleasant. The Foundation adopted an outward policy of tolerance for the Arbiters and their work. Kahlan knew better. It didn’t help matters that she held a very deep, very personal hatred for the organization.

“The Foundation isn’t something you can just quit,” Cara was saying, as Kahlan treated the bloody needle-sized pricks left by Sib’s fine-tipped claws. “I knew things, I knew secrets. That cruiser you mentioned? I commanded a fleet of them at the height of my career. You can’t just quit that. They won’t let you.”

“You were running from the Foundation,” realized Kahlan, in awe. “That’s…almost as impossible as running from me.”

Cara loosed a short laugh, free of mirth. “And now you understand why I didn’t seem to mind much that you caught me first.”

Kahlan wanted to ask why she’d quit, why she’d even risked leaving, but she was finished with Cara’s back and the conversation followed suit. What gel was needed had soaked into the blonde’s smooth skin. Kahlan wiped off the excess and sat back with a sigh to indicate she was done. Cara rolled her neck with a small moan of relief, then quickly dressed herself. Kahlan watched the hem as it was pulled down from shoulders to waist.

Exhausted but not sleepy, they took the opportunity to make a small meal. Hunger was, for the moment, the most pressing matter. Cara got up on shaky legs and, leaning her shoulder against the wall, watched as Kahlan prepared flash-frozen fruit, a bit of light breakfast meat, and two glasses of rich nectar. Kahlan felt Cara’s eyes on her throughout, and she nearly felt uneasy until she realized Cara’s interest was likely in learning how to fend for herself. That plaintive admission she’d made earlier—never having had to cook her own meal—could easily be extrapolated to a more interesting conclusion. The Foundation took care of its own; it was the only real reason anyone worked for them at all. Kahlan knew they treated their officers very well. In essence, Cara was likely spoiled.

Her eyes flicked to the blonde’s for a moment and she felt pity. When Cara left her known life, she was thrust into a world that was rather far from the pristine, organized interior of a battlecruiser. And now, she was removed even from that. Kahlan focused on her hands as she worked. If she were Cara she would be angry, disoriented, or even in denial of their harsh situation. She stole another look. Cara was calm, unruffled, like she’d been expecting this her entire life.

Her new companion was, in a word, resilient. Kahlan had no intention of telling Cara that, when she had finally closed the door behind her in her quarters, she had stood in the middle of the room, fists clenched tight. She’d nearly screamed in frustration at the impossible task set before her; nearly torn through her already-messed quarters, pulling and shoving and throwing, just to relieve the nervous energy born of dread; nearly cried when she sat down in a heap. To her credit, Kahlan had done none of those things. She’d taken steady breaths, and then she’d begun to clean.

Once they were at the table together, food began to disappear at an alarming rate. Ship crashes apparently caused a significant hunger. It wasn’t long before the plates were empty and they were left sipping nectar and staring at each other. “That wasn’t the worst meal I’ve ever had,” said Cara.

Kahlan grunted. “You ate it too fast to tell.” She nearly added her thanks, but remembered Cara’s earlier words and stopped short. The corners of Cara’s lips twitched up for the smallest moment. “Look,” Kahlan said. “You haven’t given me reason to distrust you, yet, so I’m going to tell you the only thing you need to know about Arbiters.”

Her face remained impassive but Cara’s eyes belied her disinterest. “Which is?”

“We take an oath when we accept our ability, when we take ownership and responsibility of it. We swear to never use what we were given in selfish interest. Only in the service of the system.”

“That’s it? You…make a promise?”

Kahlan nodded. “One my order takes very seriously. All Arbiters are not born equal. Whoever is the most powerful in each generation ascends to First Arbiter. They then…keep us honest.”

“So how powerful are you?”

Kahlan blinked. Cara was asking a lot of questions. Maybe she should end this sudden interrogation before it went somewhere dangerous. “Very,” she answered reluctantly, softly. “Since the Annihilation, only the First Arbiter is more powerful than me.”

Something changed in Cara’s expression and the resolve of her oath was tested yet again. Kahlan knew she should delve into this woman’s mind. It was nearly madness not to, given her situation. She took a deep breath. “Cara, listen. I can catch someone’s eye across a crowd of thousands, just for a glimpse, and make them go home and kill their loved ones. But I haven’t done anything like that to you, and I won’t. Not unless you give me reason to.”

Cara sat back and crossed her arms. “So have you done that?”

Kahlan blanched. “What?”

“Have you caught someone’s eye in a crowd and planted a sudden desire for them to kill their family?”

Kahlan held back a flash of anger, and sadness. “Yes.” She stood and made for the door. “I trust you can figure out how to clean dishes.”

****

Kahlan woke from the sleep of the dead to Sib’s plaintive wailing. Bleary-eyed, she fed him and inspected the latch on the large cage. Her makeshift fix had held: a twisted hairpin. She smiled. “You’re a smart little guy,” she murmured, “but I’m smarter.” A low rumbling noise emanated from the cage, continuous and comforting, as Sib consumed his meal.

Kahlan delayed her shower to check on Cara and quench the thirst of fresh wakefulness. After entering a code, the door panel outside the holding cell revealed an image of the blonde sleeping soundly on the cot inside. She had to look closely; it looked like Cara had just laid down. Her body was laid out perfectly straight, legs together, and her hands were folded across her belly. Kahlan shook her head, wondering if Cara hadn’t moved the whole night.

The galley was just as she’d left it. The table was adorned with two used plates and two glasses a quarter full of now-spoiled nectar. Kahlan clenched her jaw; pursed her lips. “So this is how it’s going to be,” she muttered.

Then she noticed a note scrawled and left on the counter. _Something wrong with the water,_ it said. _Filter damaged?_

Brow furrowed, Kahlan held a glass under the water faucet. Liquid came out a murky red and it hissed and hitched, like there was gas in the pipes. She groaned and backtracked to her quarters to grab her datapad, then made her way to the engine room. The water recycler and storage tank seemed utterly unaffected by the crash. Kahlan eyed them suspiciously and ran a diagnostic on her datapad. The results sent her heart straight to her stomach. A large white number, the storage tank’s current fill level, blinked on the screen at her. “Zero percent,” she breathed out. “That’s impossible.”

Closer visual inspection revealed nothing: no leaks, no holes where there shouldn’t be, not even a loose bolt. Kahlan stood back, running a hand through her hair. Then she remembered that the tank had a drainage duct. The violent crash could’ve easily damaged the valves, allowing all their water to slowly leak onto the ground outside while they slept.

She gripped the datapad with white knuckles. “Asix,” she hissed angrily. The waveform of his voice appeared at the bottom of the screen.

“Good morning, Arbiter. I see you’ve run a diagnostic on the water treatment system. Did you notice that the water storage level is—”

“Zero?” she nearly shouted. “Yes, Asix, I did. Were you monitoring this?”

“Of course.”

“You didn’t wake me!”

“Apologies, Arbiter. Two months and sixteen days ago, you expressly ordered me not to wake you anymore unless your death was imminent. Humans can survive two to three days without water.”

Kahlan nearly threw the datapad across the room. Instead, she calmly held the screen up to her face. “If we find enough water to refill the tank, the first thing I’m going to do is throw your sensitive little AI core inside and seal it.”

She shut off the datapad before Asix could reply with gracious acceptance of his fate. It always made her angrier when he did that.

This was it. Their first crisis. They were in the middle of a forest, but there was no way to tell if there was an above-ground water source nearby. Kahlan knew they were impossibly lucky to come out of the jump where they did: right in front of a habitable—if uninhabited—planet. Maybe their luck had run out.


	5. Chapter 5

It was a quality weapon, the kind of which Cara was intimately familiar with. It lay innocently on the engine room table. She knew the heft it would fill her palm with, knew the sharp report that would explode in her ears with its firing, knew the jerk in her wrist that would follow. Because with all the shared knowledge of the system, there was no weapon more cost-effective than a handled barrel that fired bits of metal at great speeds. And the Foundation was nothing if not cost-effective.

There was a physicality to these that was missing with energy weapons. Cara liked the fact that, with a large enough caliber, she could knock a man off his feet and put a gushing hole in his chest at the same time. Shock rifles and the like were deadlier weapons on average, but somehow less personal. Not as fun.

Cara stepped to the tableside and picked it up. Assuming a practiced stance, she sighted down the barrel across the room, finger stroking the trigger affectionately. She smiled—it seemed a long time since she’d fired one of these. It took her a moment to realize that the sounds beside her had ceased. Kahlan had been packing the gravity sled for their water seeking excursion. With a turn of her head, Cara saw blue eyes wide and muscles tensed. Then, and not before, she realized she was a prisoner of sorts holding a rather deadly weapon, her keeper at her mercy.

From the look on her, Kahlan was expecting the worst. Clearly Cara needed to make a point. Quickly and silently she swung the handgun straight to Kahlan’s chest, raising her brow as she prepared to speak. She didn’t get that far. The Arbiter’s eyes flashed liquid black in an instant. “Drop it,” Kahlan commanded, and Cara did. There wasn’t a thought, wasn’t a pause, wasn’t anything at all. The words left Kahlan and Cara’s hands opened, letting the weapon clatter to the floor. “Step back,” Kahlan added.

Her eyes were still black, irises clouded with darkness that seemed alive. There was nothing Cara wanted to do more in that moment than step backwards, so she did. Her gaze was fixed on Kahlan’s own; she was unable to look away as she shuffled back.

Kahlan looked down and bent to pick up the weapon, and the connection was broken. Cara blinked and shook her head. She was nearly dizzy, her thoughts fuzzy. What had Kahlan done to her? Was she still in Cara’s head? Why couldn’t she think straight?

The Arbiter set the weapon to the table with a loud clank, startling her. Cara felt relieved to see Kahlan’s eyes were blue. Her face was set hard, though, like she was angry, and Cara couldn’t think of why. “What…”

“I do hope you like your cell,” Kahlan said. “Apparently you’ll be spending the next few months there.” She nodded toward the door. “Let’s go.”

Cara shook her head. “No. Wait. That’s not.”

“Are you trying to say no to an Arbiter?”

“Kahlan, listen. I wasn’t. I was going to.” She huffed out a breath, squeezing her eyes shut to concentrate. “I was trying to prove I could be trusted!”

Kahlan didn’t look convinced. Which was understandable, Cara decided. “I was going to point the gun at you, and then…not fire it, to prove that I had a chance and passed it,” Cara explained, suddenly feeling sullen. It would’ve been quite a well-made point if Kahlan hadn’t… “But you ruined it. With your mind thing. I thought you swore not to use that.”

“I can’t serve the system if I’m dead. And do you expect me to believe that?”

“Then do it again, and ask me if I’d have shot you. I’ll have to tell you the truth, right?”

Kahlan shook her head. “I can’t.”

“You just did.”

“That was different.”

“Not really.”

“Cara…”

“Kahlan!”

With a huff, Kahlan threw an aid kit at Cara’s chest. She barely caught it. “Load it. We’re leaving.”

Cara eyed her sidelong as she set it on the sled. “So you believe me. You trust me.”

All she got in answer was a raised brow and a look. Cara nodded; she could take a hint. Their trust was poised on a knife’s edge. Which was all Kahlan’s fault.

Kahlan tapped her datapad, and the gravity sled rose to waist height with a whirring hum. It was little more than a stretcher with an anti-gravity module. Right now it held an empty pair of sizable barrels and supplies for the trip. If the rather shaky footage from the flight recorder wasn’t wholly mistaken, there could be a sizable lake straight to the east. It was their best hope; their only hope. Asix gave them an exceedingly helpful estimate of one to six hours’ walk.

Cara elected herself the sled’s pilot, taking its side and following after Kahlan. They’d reached the hatch when Kahlan departed without explanation. She returned with a familiar ball of fur at her heels. “Sib wanted to come,” Kahlan explained. Cara shrugged nonchalance, inwardly cursing the thing and its owner. “He makes for a pretty good bodyguard,” the Arbiter added. For his part, Sib leapt onto the sled and promptly curled up beside the barrels like it was his second home.

When they stepped through the hatch, Cara was struck by a wall of damp heat. It nearly took her breath away. When they crashed the temperature had almost been comfortable; it must’ve been a cooler morning. “It’s a bit hot,” Cara observed, and Kahlan turned to her, suddenly worried.

“Maybe we should wait for nightfall. We’ll get dehydrated just walking in this. There’s too much sugar in the nectar and it’s all we have.”

“So you’d like to venture into this completely unknown forest _in the dark._ As opposed to, I don’t know, in daylight. Should I remind you that we still don’t know what’s out there in the way of wildlife?”

Kahlan’s hand fell to the weapon at her hip. “I know. I suppose we should try and make it.” She looked up to the sky, where the two suns were barely visible through the distant curtain of greenery. “Asix,” she called toward the sled, “how many hours until nightfall?”

The datapad chirped beside Sib, startling him—and making Cara smirk. “Approximately three, Arbiter. This planet appears to have a halved diurnal cycle relative to the human standard.”

Cara groaned. “Six hours light, six hours dark? _That’s_ not going to be a huge pain.”

“Well. We might end up making it in the dark anyway. At least we have lights.” Kahlan sighed. “And barring everything else, we have to make this trip while we’re still in well enough shape to.”

“Maybe we’ll find a river a few minutes out,” offered Cara as they took the first few steps east.

Kahlan smiled ruefully. “That’d be nice.”

“Or maybe we won’t find anything at all,” Cara said darkly. “Maybe we’ll die a slow death of thirst and lethargy.” She grimaced and added, “After all.”

Kahlan frowned and turned away.

They set a conservative pace but it wasn’t long before sweat began to trickle down Cara’s skin. Kahlan was wearing a jumpsuit with sleeves rolled up, and its light fabric appeared breathable. Cara hadn’t paid much attention to her rifling through the Arbiter’s closet; she chose a top with a deep neckline and half-length trousers. The problem was that the top was some thick material that almost seemed laced with plastic. Cara presently decided she was dying in the oppressive heat. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said, and loosed the gravity sled to swiftly strip off her top.

For a second, Kahlan’s eyes dipped to her simple cotton bra and the cleavage there. “And if I do mind?”

Cara shrugged, tossing the sweaty shirt on the sled. “Too bad?”

She watched Kahlan’s eyes, hoping—no, expecting—to see a lingering gaze. She didn’t. Cara smirked to herself, because it wasn’t like she didn’t mind a challenge. Anyway, now she could last a little longer before passing out.

“I told you that top was hot, you know.”

“I wasn’t listening,” Cara said.

The Arbiter hummed sarcastically.

Not a few minutes later, Kahlan pulled her hair back into a ponytail. A few minutes after that, Kahlan loosed an audible sigh and shimmied down the top of her jumpsuit, tying the sleeves around her waist. The fabric of Kahlan’s own bra was soaked. When they started moving again in earnest, Cara’s eyes traced a drop of sweat from the nape of her neck to the clasp, then another down the dip of her spine as she walked, its journey taking it over slick, pale skin. It paused in the small of her back before sliding down. Cara licked her lips.

That was when she realized her mouth was dry. She was thirsty. Reaching delicately over Sib, Cara lifted the jug of nectar and took a swig as she walked. The thick liquid coated her throat; it was satisfying, but only just.

“Stop,” Kahlan said suddenly. Cara shoved the nectar back on the sled and twisted her neck, looking for trouble. All she found was an angry hiss from an arched and upset Sib. She’d apparently shoved the jug right into him, but couldn’t find it in herself to be even a little sorry.

“Well?” Cara prompted. “What?”

“Listen.”

Cara did. There wasn’t much to hear, only a bit of a breeze in the treetops hundreds of feet up.

“This is a strange forest,” Kahlan pronounced. “Have you ever seen one so quiet?”

“No.” Cara looked around idly, and happened to notice something strange. Beginning around a dozen yards up, the bark of the great tree trunks was colored slightly lighter than the base. The dividing line was at the same level on every one in sight. Cara chalked it up as a trait of the alien plant life. “Maybe all the life is nocturnal,” she said. “Suns set in two hours. I’m sure we’ll be swarmed with all sorts of incredibly dangerous things.”

Cara smiled to herself—maybe if she fended off some fell beast, saving the Arbiter’s life, she’d get to name her reward.

“Why do you sound like you’re looking forward to that?” Kahlan muttered.

“Just so you know…if it comes down to it, I’m taking your gun,” said Cara. “I’m a better shot than you.”

“You haven’t even—”

“I’m better.”

“You are obnoxious,” Kahlan told her, looking at her sternly. “Stop talking.”

Cara managed to keep her tone suitably sincere. “Whatever you say.”

The suns were indeed setting quickly, but the sweltering heat only seemed to grow as they walked. Cara noticed something that had been in the back of her mind since their first step, waiting to come into clarity: they were walking down a slope. The recording had been too unclear to give them any sense of the landscape at large, but they were definitely headed downhill.

The vegetation began to change around them: first smaller trees as the monstrous ones began to thin, then rapidly thickening ground foliage. Everything was oversized, exaggerated, making Cara feel very small—like she was in some disturbing nightmare where she didn’t matter. They came across a felled giant, a former behemoth of a tree now rotting on the ground. The jagged splinters at the base and stump were like great spears; twice the length of Cara’s arm and ending in sharp points. There was an unspoken question: What force could possibly be strong enough to push the thing over, to snap the massive girth of the trunk like a twig?

A light breeze made huge leaves sway around them, their rustling the only sound to join footsteps. There were tall, thin stalks; immense, bell-shaped plants; a plethora of fern-like growths with wide fronds; thick vines twisting and falling between trees, draped over brush. There was also a curious lack of color—no bright flowers of any kind could be seen, just endless shades of green. The same springy moss was spread across the ground in patches. They afforded a wide berth to any and every sizable plant, which sometimes sent them on quite a detour. With its live connection to the ship, Kahlan’s datapad served as their compass and Asix their guide.

They were both growing tired, having sweated out so much precious water. The nectar was long gone; there was nothing to quench their thirst with, nothing to wet parched throats and tongues. Muscles were complaining and aching, though neither would admit to a need for rest. Their only boon was the setting suns—it was getting cooler. The air was still thick and humid but the temperature dropped steadily. Cara was grateful for every degree lost. At the same time, that newly noticed incline seemed to be flattening out, and the vegetation grew thicker yet: as good an indication of nearby water as anything.

The Arbiter hadn’t proved much for idle conversation, of which Cara approved. Speaking was a waste of energy for tasks like this. Unless it was important. “I have an idea,” she said.

Kahlan promptly stopped in her tracks and turned, looking almost grateful for the moment’s respite. Her cheeks were ruddy, her skin and long hair damp with sweat. “Which is?”

“This sled I’m pulling. Why don’t I take a seat and let you pull it? I’ve pulled it up until now.”

“Not with me on it,” Kahlan pointed out condescendingly. “Besides, it’s like pulling a balloon. Tell you what: if you can get Sib off the sled, you can ride on it.”

Cara’s narrowing eyes shifted to the creature. She’d had plenty of time to inspect it in daylight: it seemed mostly feline, barring a rough-skinned face. Its features were arranged such that it was so ugly it was…adorable. Cara hated adorable things. After pondering her chances, she slowly reached her arm toward the curled up creature. Sib regarded her with calm green eyes. “Shoo,” Cara whispered furtively, motioning with her hand. In a flash, Sib’s arm swiped out and his glistening claws nearly sliced Cara’s fingers open.

“I’ll walk,” Cara announced, crossing her arms as Sib curled back up, unruffled. “There’s barely room on the thing anyway.”

“Not enough for the both of you, that’s for sure,” said Kahlan, clearly amused.

“Bodyguard, you said?”

Kahlan shrugged. “I ran into a bit of trouble outside a bar once. I was surrounded but before I knew what was happening, Sib had paralyzed one of them, shredded another’s face apart, and was tearing at the throat of a third. The rest scattered.” She looked at her pet proudly. “I didn’t know he had it in him. Since then, I take him with me wherever I can.”

“He’s unnaturally fast,” Cara admitted.

“His kind are.”

The suns continued to set, and the cooled temperature afforded great comfort. Even so, if they didn’t reach water soon they’d have to come up with another plan. The problem there was the lack of any second solution. Turning back wasn’t an option; without water, they’d be returning to a metallic coffin. Complete darkness fell around them at the three-hour mark, necessitating reliance on the blazing lights lining the sled.

An hour later, they stumbled upon something expected and something breathtaking.

Cara lurched out of the treeline to stand beside Kahlan. They’d found their lake. It was spread out wide in front of them, dark waters rippling with a slight breeze and small waves lapping at the shoreline a few feet ahead. But Cara and Kahlan were looking up at something previously hidden by the nearly impenetrable crown canopy.

Exploded across half the open night sky in a vast web was a bright nebula, ribbons of dust and stars forming veins of violet and deep blue. Brilliant suns were clustered throughout, and without the light of the sled there was a soft purple glow cast over everything. Not a single moon could be seen, just a patchwork of light and dark, of blackness and color.

“It’s beautiful,” whispered Kahlan.

“I’m literally dying of thirst,” Cara whispered back.

“Right.” Kahlan cleared her throat. “I’ll test the lake.”

After carefully taking a sample in a vial, Kahlan plugged it into her datapad. Asix analyzed it and pronounced it normal everyday water— in far more words and numbers—of the kind found throughout the universe. They quickly set up the pump and had the drums filled minutes later. For all the added weight, the gravity sled only settled a few inches lower. In the harsh lights below, Cara eagerly watched Kahlan’s every move as she affixed a filter to the drum’s bleed valve. Slowly, a stream of pure, clean water began to fill a container in Kahlan’s hand.

If Cara’s mouth could’ve watered, it would have. It looked like salvation and rescue and really good sex in liquid form: sparkling, clear, tempting. Though Cara couldn’t blame her, she still grumbled in disapproval when Kahlan gulped down the first draught. But with a deep breath and a smile, Kahlan stepped aside and let Cara have her turn.

It was cold, sweet relief down her throat and Cara couldn’t get enough. She drank greedily and had to be touched on the shoulder to remember that Kahlan had only had a taste.

Dangerous thirst fully quenched, the women stood on the shoreline in silence. They’d done it, surpassed their first obstacle together, and now they were that much more likely to survive. “We’re not going back right away,” said Kahlan, arms crossed as she stared out, eyes lifted to the nebula above.

“Tired?”

“I’d miss the view.”

Cara snorted, because she was exhausted and that meant there was no way Kahlan wasn’t. “I think we should go back. Resting here is an unnecessary risk.”

Kahlan nodded seriously as she zipped back up the top of her jumpsuit. “If you’re frightened, we can head back immediately.”

Cara opened her mouth, then closed it. Wordlessly, she took a cross-legged seat on the grassy slope, a couple feet from the lapping shoreline. The muscles in her legs immediately began to thank her. Kahlan made no pretense: she stretched out on her back beside Cara, arms folded under her head, gazing at the night sky as if drinking it in. She loosed a small whistle, and after a small commotion in the sled behind them, Sib bounded up to Kahlan. He settled on her belly, head between her breasts, where he began to rumble softly in contentment as Kahlan stroked his back. Cara, suddenly jealous, couldn’t blame him.

“So you want to talk,” guessed Cara, shifting back a bit—she didn’t like the thought of Kahlan staring at her back.

“Not necessarily.”

Cara looked over at Kahlan. The lambent glow of the nebula clearly outlined the profile of her face, and shone a bit in the tresses of her hair. Her chest rose and fell, and Cara took the guise of watching her pet to get a good, lengthy eyeful of the full curves there. Presently, she decided she was going to get into this woman’s pants or die trying. “If I’m going to be living with that thing,” Cara said, “I need to know more about it.”

“He’s not a thing.” Kahlan scratched his ears affectionately. Sib yawned. “His species doesn’t actually have a proper name. The natives called them blood cats.”

Cara huffed in amusement. Sib flicked his lazy gaze toward her, as if daring her to actually laugh.

“Which is a mistake,” Kahlan continued. “They don’t drink blood at all. Their main source of nutrients is cerebrospinal fluid, whether it’s from humans or other animals. That’s why he went for the back of your neck. His fangs and bite are designed to sink right into your spine without damaging it, but he can’t do that with you flopping around. So he paralyzes you.”

“Thoughtful,” muttered Cara.

“The human body actually produces quite a bit of excess every day. So that’s what he takes, and he can survive off a single bite for a week.” Proudly she added, “He’s a really remarkable creature.”

“So you let him feed on you.”

Kahlan chuckled. “Oh, no. I buy vials regularly from a medical center.” She grimaced suddenly. “A Foundation medical center, actually.”

“You hate us, don’t you? You hate the Foundation.”

“You’re still asking a lot of questions,” Kahlan said.

Cara didn’t say anything, instead waiting for an answer. She could probably wait all night, considering the rest of the night consisted of less than four hours.

“Of course I hate the Foundation,” Kahlan said quietly, at length. “I’m sure every Arbiter does, and I’m sure we have the right.”

“Maybe I have the right to hate Arbiters,” said Cara, because it was back in force: that powerful, confusing twist of guilt and outrage.

“Maybe you do.”

“Don’t you want to know why?”

“If you want to tell me.”

Cara knew this was dangerous, that all Kahlan had to do was connect the dots. But maybe she preferred that to a ticking time bomb, and this way she wouldn’t have to tell Kahlan outright. “A few months ago I turned myself in. I was promised safe asylum in exchange for classified Foundation intelligence.” She couldn’t keep the petty bitterness from her voice and it made her all the more angry. “But your First Arbiter looked into my eyes and lied to a hall full of people, saying I was still working for them. That I was the Foundation’s bitch, that I was trying to double-cross them. When she sentenced me to final arbitration her eyes were still black. So much for our deal. So much for the legendary impartiality of the Arbiters. I escaped, barely, and I’ve been on the run ever since.”

She turned to see Kahlan watching her intently. There it was: the pieces were laid in front of her. But Kahlan’s eyes were still blue and her hand wasn’t straying to her hip. Cara had so far figured Kahlan as a strikingly intelligent woman; there was something other than obfuscation holding her back.

“I see,” Kahlan said carefully. “So do you hate me, then?”

“Not yet. It wasn’t you that screwed me over. I pride myself on keeping things separate.”

Kahlan offered a strained smile. “So do I.”

Clearly she knew; she’d figured it out. But if that was the case, only a psychopath would smile at all. Cara sighed as she lay down next to Kahlan, giving her and her blood cat plenty of space. There were still too many layers to this woman. Well, thanks to the fresh supply of water, she had at least a few weeks to figure her out. “I could take a nap,” Cara murmured at length; her muscles were heavy and her eyelids followed suit. She’d only been awake a few hours, but they were grueling ones and the darkness was confusing her internal clock.

“Yeah.” Kahlan yawned, scratching Sib behind his ears. “He’ll let us know if anything happens.”

Cara stretched out, closed her eyes to the majestic sight above, and fell asleep in moments.

****

It was a strange sound, like a soft and consistent hiss, that nudged Cara into wakefulness. Darkness was giving way to morning light; the nebula was mostly faded, soon to be hidden completely for the next six hours. She sat up. Kahlan was still asleep next to her. A turn of her head revealed Sib sitting idly on his haunches under the gravity sled, as if seeking shelter. Cara blinked, and then she placed the sound: rain. Rain was coming. She couldn’t tell from what direction, but it would be there soon.

Kahlan mumbled something but wouldn’t wake when Cara nudged her. She grabbed the datapad from the sled and stepped to the shoreline, intending to get an idea of the scale of their surroundings. “Asix, does the ship have flares?”

“The vessel is equipped with six location assistance—”

“Fire one.”

Not until then did Cara lift her eyes to the way they’d come. She raised her brow and turned in a slow circle. Morning mist was obscuring things somewhat, but it was easy to see that the lake was situated in the bottom of an immense bowl—miles across, easily. The outer rim seemed to be rock; she squinted to see a sheer cliff face encircling the forested middle. Just then, a bright red flare soared silently into the air, rising from a point halfway to the edge. They had quite a way’s walk ahead of them, and—Cara groaned—it would be all uphill this time. The first raindrops hit her face a moment later. She crossed her arms and looked at Sib, who looked back at her from under the sled in a manner that could only be described as smug. Cara glared at him before kneeling to wake Kahlan.


	6. Chapter 6

Kahlan was asleep. Her mind belonged to the peaceful nothingness that exists between everything else, the void neither light nor dark. There were sparks, of course, signals coursing through axons, passing from synapse to synapse to control her breathing, to register and let her turn away from discomfort—the brain is only completely dark in death. But things changed when the void became less so. It was the birth of a dream, wrenched into being by mere opportunity. The firing of neurons had lit certain pathways, and her mind twisted and turned the information, trying to make sense of it. It consulted memories and swept through catalogued experiences but found nothing to compare this to. So it wasn’t a familiar face that snapped into being in Kahlan’s mind; it was simply a man, average in every way with features that belonged to everyone and no one. But ah, there was more—this, her brain could interpret, and her mind’s eye turned and found a familiar forest rich, lush, and green; heavy with the scent of wet earth. They were going somewhere important, she and the man, so she quickened her steps over springy moss to keep up with him. When they arrived in a quiet grove, open to the sky above, Kahlan looked up to the bright, violet nebula stretched from end to end. It was shining out strong against sunlight. The man, with eyes so dark they could be black, said to her, “This is your home.”

The sparks began to thicken. Neurons fired freely and passed more and more impulses, and it spread like a chain reaction until Kahlan’s mind was flooded with activity. She was waking, and the dream ceased.

“Kahlan,” a voice was saying—Cara’s. “Kahlan, wake up. We need to go.” There was a shove at her shoulder, the kind that said it wasn’t the first. Kahlan felt raindrops on her skin and heard them on the lake. It sounded like a kind of music.

****

Once their water problems were sorted, the first thing Kahlan did was take a shower in her tiny bathroom. She stood under the steamy spray in bliss, letting the sweat and dirt of the past couple days run down her skin and circle into the drain. The crash had bruised her hip and pulled a muscle in her shoulder, and even those hurts seemed now to melt away. Kahlan closed her eyes, turned her face up into the torrent, and allowed herself a smile of simple pleasure.

She washed her hair and skin, scrubbed her face, lasered her legs and underarms smooth, and emerged feeling like a human woman again. Wiping the mirror clear, she canted her head to the side. Well, she corrected herself, mostly human. The race of Arbiters was unique, the only of its kind in the system. There were variations: people from one planet could run a little faster than others, while another planet produced humans that could last a little longer without food, or water. But a new ability—an entirely radical change in the brain or body—was not found anywhere else.

Kahlan slicked her wet hair back and crossed her arms under her breasts. Focusing on her own reflection, she let her power surface, just enough to watch her own pupils blow wide, dilating to crowd out blue. There was a children’s story told to young Arbiters to teach them to be careful with their ability. If you stare too long in a mirror, Kahlan was told long ago, if you let go, final arbitration will happen and your mind will turn in on itself until it’s empty, until there’s nothing left—a fate worse than death.

It was rubbish, of course; just a story. Self-arbitration was impossible. Kahlan knew this because she’d tried it when she was sixteen years old, when she’d decided a life void of thought was better than a life dedicated to serving people she didn’t know—hundreds of trillions of people across the system that she didn’t care about whatsoever, that looked at her strangely when they found out what she was. The earliest emotion Kahlan had learned to dredge from the depths of strangers’ eyes was hatred. It was a consequence of fear, her grandfather had explained, but that didn’t matter to Kahlan; not then. If the system wanted to hate her then Kahlan would hate it back.

Her sigh resonated against brushed steel walls as she looked away. All of that was a long time ago, but those feelings were still locked away somewhere. They tortured her at times, and she would wish she hadn’t been born with this burden. Nethria, the planet that Arbiters called home, had been structured like any other advanced society. Kahlan’s future was decided for her, a rigid path laid out from the moment she was born and pronounced gifted. The Arbiter’s gift only manifested in one percent of Nethrian women but all of her people shared a common gene, one that kept them safe from the power of their peers. Without the responsibility thrust upon her she could’ve found a soulmate, fallen in love, raised a family.

She still wanted to, sometimes more than anything.

Kahlan wrapped a towel around her body and opened the door to her quarters. She found Cara standing in the near corner, relaxed and nonchalant against the wall, and she hadn’t been there earlier. Kahlan blinked. She found herself keenly aware that the towel barely reached the tops of her thighs. Cara’s eyes lingered there while Kahlan fumbled for words. “What are you doing?” she finally burst out.

“Waiting,” said Cara. “You’re not the only one who needs a shower.”

“You couldn’t wait outside?”

“I thought I’d go ahead and grab a fresh set of clothes. Then your animal decided to corral me.”

Kahlan peeked her head around the corner, glance flying to the ceiling. Sib was hanging upside down from a light bar, fierce gaze locked on Cara. Kahlan smiled proudly. “Sib, leave Cara alone for now.”

Cara took a cautious step forward. Sib hissed menacingly, scrabbling closer along the fixture. “Sib,” Kahlan chided. “Come here. Now.”

The blood cat dropped feet first onto Kahlan’s bed. He bounded to her desk, and lunged at the metal wall where he pushed off with his haunches, springing himself into Kahlan’s arms. He settled into her embrace and twisted his neck to regard Cara. Kahlan ruffled the fur on his nape and rubbed the skin behind his ears. “Cara isn’t a threat to me, you silly thing. Right, Cara?”

“Right,” said Cara, nodding affirmatively.

“Here. I have an idea.” Still dripping water to the floor, Kahlan deposited Sib to her bed, where he sat attentively. She lowered her eyes while she tightened the towel, tucking the corner more securely around her side, then beckoned Cara. “Hug me.”

No sooner had the words left her than Cara stepped forward. Kahlan delicately embraced her, turning a bit so that Sib could see her face. She flashed the animal a reassuring smile over Cara’s shoulder. “See? We like Cara. Cara is nice. We don’t need to be so prickly all the time, okay?”

Cara tightened the hug, pressing their bodies close, her nose in Kahlan’s wet hair. “We need to sell it, obviously,” she explained after she noticed Kahlan wasn’t breathing. “Also, you smell really good.”

Kahlan cleared her throat and extricated herself, needlessly adjusting the towel around her breasts. “You don’t.” She motioned to the bathroom behind her. “Help yourself.”

Sib curled up in the middle of Kahlan’s bed, watching calmly as the women shuffled around each other.

****

“So this is what lets you track in dead space,” Cara mused. Kahlan nodded.

“Well, it’s what keeps me fed while I’m there,” she clarified. “I’m counting on us finding something here to make use of it.”

They were in a very cramped room sectioned off from the galley—the aeroponics chamber. While it was in use, temperature, humidity, and light level were all tightly controlled to keep the environment conducive to vegetative growth. Rows of small plastic tanks were empty, but every one was capable of hosting a germinating plant. It was an incredibly efficient method; the root system was kept suspended in purified air and a fine, nutrient-rich mist containing a growth accelerant was sprayed into the sealed tanks at regular intervals—no water pumps or soil necessary. The foliage was free to grow as it wished above the lid. It was a system usually reserved for science or exploratory vessels, which often spent months at a time away from a reliable source of fresh sustenance—and didn’t have room for bulky food stores.

Cara wrinkled her nose. “What if I like eating things that used to be alive and moving? They generally taste better.”

Kahlan shrugged. “Too bad?”

****

The rain continued off and on. During daylight, and as weather permitted, Kahlan and Cara scoured the surrounding forest for small edible plants, venturing in different directions each time. The period of darkness that split their day in half was spent at the ship, and often found Kahlan reading in the galley while Cara paced restlessly, waiting for the second sunrise—the blonde was becoming more irritable by the day, but Kahlan knew better than to ask her what was wrong. Asix performed molecular analysis on sample after sample, and gradually they gathered over a dozen different edibles. There were no fruits, no flowers, and it was Kahlan that first voiced a common thought. There seemed to be no insect or animal life—they could be on a planet rather early in its evolutionary path.

Cara brought up a concurrent possibility: nocturnal fauna. During the few hours spent in darkness on the trek to the lake, they had hardly been searching for it. It was unsettling to consider but there might have been eyes on them once darkness had settled, kept away only by the bright lights lining the gravity sled.

Tired from the day’s excursion, Kahlan settled into bed after checking on the aeroponics chamber one last time. It had become her baby, her charge, and she’d lavished attention on the plants it held, often ducking in hourly to report to an uninterested Cara their smallest progress. But for now she dimmed the lights in her quarters down to their softest glow, and prepared to rest. Sib already slept in his cage beside her. Curled up under the covers, Kahlan was well on her way to joining him when a fist pounded on her door, startling her awake. “What?” she shouted, lurching out of bed and stumbling across the room. The panel slid open to reveal Cara standing there, glowering. “What is it?” she repeated, blinking repeatedly at the harsh light of the corridor.

“When do you plan on doing something about _that_?” hissed Cara, gesturing vaguely at the ceiling.

Kahlan looked up, bewildered.

“No,” Cara growled. “The noise, Kahlan. That ever-present and incredibly annoying noise. I don’t know how you’ve been sleeping, because I haven’t.”

“The rain?” Kahlan’s brow rose. “You’re complaining about the rain. Hitting the ship.”

Cara’s jaw worked, and she nodded curtly.

Well, lack of sleep explained her irritability. There was indeed a consistently soft roar of raindrops striking the hull, but Kahlan had easily tuned it out. “You can’t…ignore it?”

“Would I be here if I couldn’t ignore it?”

Kahlan shrugged, and nodded down at her nightshift, thin and nearly sheer as it was. “You seem keen on trying to catch me wearing next to nothing.”

Cara blinked. It hadn’t occurred to Kahlan that the blonde might have thought she was being stealthy. “I can’t sleep,” said Cara, “so you should turn the shields on or something.”

Kahlan nodded. “Alright. You could’ve asked earlier, you know. Then you wouldn’t have to show up at my door, exhausted and making demands.” She slipped past Cara, stepping out into the corridor on her way to the cockpit. She heard Cara step after her and turned. “You’re coming?”

“Thought I should learn,” said Cara. “Your ship is strange.”

“It’s not strange,” Kahlan bit out, and calmed herself—sometimes it was unsettling how much affection she felt for this heap of metal and bolts. “It’s just…not Foundation, is all.”

Cara nodded as if to say, no, it most definitely wasn’t.

Kahlan slid into the pilot’s seat and powered up the displays. Their low, blue light filled the cockpit, casting soft shadows. Sometimes it reminded Kahlan of being underwater, but the suggestion was ruined by the countless raindrops sliding their way down the wide windows to darkness before her. It was a simple execution; two hard switches, a selection on the systems screen, and a lever pushed full powered up the shield generators. The silence, utter and complete, was instantaneous—if she were to go outside and look, the sheets of rain would be breaking on an invisible surface surrounding the hull. Kahlan heard Cara’s soft breathing behind her, heard the brush of her hand on the chair’s shoulder. “Got it,” Cara said, voice strangely loud.

Kahlan turned her chair a bit to look up at Cara. “Did you not grow up on a planet with rain?”

“I was a space kid. Grew up on a fleet out in Gamma sector, so my feet didn’t touch a planet’s surface until I was ten.”

“Oh,” said Kahlan.

“Yeah. I’ve always felt more at home…up there.”

****

It was somewhere between a whim and a worry that drove Cara and Kahlan to make a second lengthy journey—this time in the opposite direction, away from the center of the bowl and up toward the rim. Cara felt that they should reconnoiter for possible threats; Kahlan wanted to search for possible new food sources. She was still holding out hope for a fruit-bearing tree or shrub to make an appearance. They set off just before sunrise, when the sky was just lightening and it was still cool. Sib stayed behind this time, being in an ornery mood as he was.

Kahlan felt good. Her body was refreshed and fed and the exercise of walking the slight uphill slope created a pleasant burn in her muscles. The morning air was chilly against her skin; she and Cara both wore tank tops and shorts. The suns soon rose into visibility while the women worked their way through ever-thinning forest. The enormous trees like those of their crash site stayed present, but in lesser and lesser numbers. Kahlan chewed her way through two stalks of a leafless plant that had proved a runaway success in the aeroponics chamber; it grew rather fast, the taste was somewhat sweet, and it left her feeling energized. Even Cara admitted it wasn’t bad.

The ground soil beneath them changed to a lighter-colored and less nourishing clay, and they left the great hardwoods behind. Gaunt shrubbery and shorter trees, stubbled with scrawny limbs, replaced them. The great wall of earth-colored stone, striped and mottled with green moss, slowly revealed itself as the morning mists lifted, burned away by the suns. It loomed ahead, visible well above the treetops, but it was still startling when they stumbled upon it. “Oh,” Kahlan said. She promptly took a seat on the ground to catch her breath. The last half-hour had seen a marked increase in the slope of the terrain.

“Well,” mused Cara, stepping closer to the cliff face, “it would seem we’re well and truly trapped. If this thing really goes all the way around without a break.”

“Any reason why it would?”

“Any reason why it wouldn’t?”

Kahlan shrugged and looked up; the top seemed impossibly high and the incline was nearly vertical. “Doesn’t seem natural.”

“It doesn’t,” Cara agreed. She dropped their backpack of supplies to the ground and started searching for a way up the rock. She found a foot hold and lifted herself up, but her hands scrabbled at the surface and found nothing. After a rather undignified attempt at lifting herself up further, she stepped back, landing hard on her feet with a huff. Kahlan bit her lip to keep from smiling.

“Here,” she said, standing. “Let me. I don’t think they had trees and such on your fleet, did they?”

“There was an arboretum ship,” Cara defended. “But…we didn’t go there much.”

“Well.” Kahlan quickly tied her hair back into a ponytail as she stepped closer. “On Nethria, there were plenty of trees, and mountains, and caves, and lakes. My sister and I were rather adventurous young Arbiters. Much to my grandfather’s dismay.”

Cara nodded at the cliff and placed her hands on her hips. “By all means.”

Kahlan rubbed her hands together and sidled to the left and the right, peering up and mapping movements with her eyes until she found a promising starting point. The cliff face was yet cold and slightly damp from the night, but not dangerously so. Her fingers flexed and searched and found hold after hold, and her feet pushed her up and up. Soon she was lifting herself almost effortlessly, clambering up the sheer rock like she belonged there. Suddenly she paused and looked down at Cara, blinking at the dizzying distance she’d climbed. “What am I looking for?” she shouted.

Cara, neck craned up and watching her, gestured around her. “See if it really goes all the way around,” she yelled.

Kahlan twisted her neck in both directions, but the treetops were just in the way. She climbed a little further, delicately now that a fall could be fatal, and tried again. This time, the sight took her breath away. She tightened her grip on the rock, settling in her perch so she could take it all in. The vast bowl stretched out in front of her, half dark and half light. The morning suns hadn’t risen far enough to illuminate it fully; their light was breaking strong over the cliff top to the west. One side of the bowl was shrouded in heavy shadow, white mists still weaving through treetops, while the other was shining bright and green and lush. Kahlan had been to all five galaxies in the system, had seen plenty of things beautiful and repulsive in her as-yet short career as an Arbiter, but somehow she could still be taken aback as she was now. It was glorious, and somehow she liked that it made her feel so very insignificant.

Cara’s voice sounded small itself. “Well? Does it?”

“Oh,” Kahlan muttered to herself. “Right.” She squinted to inspect the rim, and slowly let her eyes travel all the way across. There wasn’t a break to be seen, not a shadow of a cleft. She did, however, feel that it was more oval-shaped than strictly circular, and the lake was off center a bit. Such irregularities were somehow comforting.

Kahlan was breathless when she reached the ground safely, smiling at her own accomplishment and the beauty she’d seen. “It goes all the way around,” she said. “Not a break. Or a way out.”

“Then what’s so funny?” said Cara darkly. “If I actually tried I could’ve climbed, too.”

“It’s…” She shook her head, not interested in trying to describe her experience. “Nothing. While I was up there, I did see something maybe ten minute’s walk to the east. A dark part of the rock.”

“A dark part of the rock,” Cara repeated, brow raised incredulously.

“Might as well?”

“Might as well,” admitted Cara.

Kahlan grinned. “Echo.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

The anomaly turned out to be a crevasse, much to Kahlan’s confusion. “Not a break?” Cara taunted as they approached. “That looks like a break to me.”

Kahlan frowned. “It’s not,” she said after further inspection. “Look.”

It was a fissure in the rock face wide enough to allow four people to stand abreast, but in a curious manner, it narrowed upward as it ran. The result was a strip of rock floor that dead-ended two dozen feet in, and was open to the sky for the first half. It would make poor cover. “Useless,” Cara declared, turning to leave. “We found out what we needed to. Nothing alive up here, and we’re quite trapped.”

On the way back, Kahlan found three possible specimens: one Asix declared as deadly poisonous, one that had close to zero nutritional value, and the last was a little plant with oddly shaped leaves that was struggling in the shadows of its much larger cousins. Remote analysis done, Asix pronounced the leaves as having a strong taste and politely recommended their use for soup or stew. Kahlan carefully dug it free, then handed it to Cara, smiling as she rubbed her hands clean. “Could be good,” she said.

“Why are you in such a good mood recently?” asked Cara suddenly, batting clumps of dirt from the roots. “You do know we’re still stuck here hoping that somebody might feel like answering a distress call.”

Kahlan paused. “I don’t know. I guess I just feel like we’re going to make it.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Cara.


	7. Chapter 7

The damned rain would not stop falling.

It was a rather cruel joke, Cara knew—the day after they nearly thirsted to their deaths, the sky saw fit to burst open and drench them in the liquid of life. And gradually, said sky stopped sealing itself back up. Now, weeks later, it had settled into a perpetual gray, and Cara found herself perpetually bored.

Life in the ship reached a dismally predictable pattern. Cara’s days consisted of finding new and entertaining ways to pass the time, including but not limited to pestering Kahlan, hitting on Kahlan—both literal exercises in subtlety—and dodging one painful death after another at the razor-sharp claws of a certain protective blood cat. The women had been forced into a close relationship and carried that as far as they could; now there was only one thing, Cara’s secret, standing in the way of a more comfortable coexistence.

The rain had to stop eventually, and Cara checked either the hatch or the cockpit a few times every day, hoping for a break in the wet weather. She was always disappointed.

“This is driving you mad,” guessed Kahlan. She’d found Cara leaning inside the open hatch, arms crossed as she gazed out at the loud and heavy rain.

“I thought rain was supposed to be a good thing,” Cara said, holding out her palm to catch a few fat drops. “This is just ugly. Everything’s gray and muddy and wet.”

Kahlan came to stand beside her. “There is no forest so beautiful as one after a fresh rain. The leaves glisten, the smell is light and crisp, and everything is bright and green and fresh.”

Cara was well used to the Arbiter’s eagerly shared love of beautiful things; this time, she chose not to mock it. “Does the ugly part always last this long?”

“It didn’t on Nethria,” said Kahlan. “And this planet’s weather and climate…there’s no telling when it’ll stop, really. It’s obviously a wet season. It might last weeks yet.”

“Trapped,” growled Cara. “Like animals in a cage.” She glanced behind her suddenly. “No offense to your little pet monster.”

Kahlan shrugged. “He’s sulking in my quarters about something, just like all last week. But Cara, that doesn’t make any sense—you’ve spent your whole life in one ship or another, right? Why do you suddenly feel trapped on mine?”

Cara thought for a moment. “Because I’m not in charge, probably.”

“Sounds about right,” Kahlan sighed. “Something else has been bothering me. You seem really concerned that we’re stuck in this…big bowl.” She motioned with her hands, indicating the landscape at large outside. “Why would we even want to get out of it? The ship is here, and we can’t move it, so we’ll be staying with it until we’re rescued.”

“I just think we should have the option, that’s all.”

“Cara, I can’t think of any reason why we’d leave the ship.”

Slowly Cara raised her hand out into the rain again, watching and feeling the drops pelt her skin. “Something I learned during those months on the run: if you get trapped, you’re dead. Doesn’t matter where or how.”

“We’re not on the run,” Kahlan insisted. “We’re safe, here. Wet, but safe.”

****

“Match,” said Cara, settling back with a smirk and folded arms. Chin in hand, Kahlan frowned, staring at the board on the galley table between them.

She was becoming quite good at this game. It was a simple thing, just small plastic pieces, colored either white or red and of various types, arranged on a surface painted with an expansive galaxy. The object, of course, was nothing less than total domination of said galaxy—achieved by maneuvering one’s pieces around the various sectors to conquer them one by one, all the while fending off an opponent’s attempts to do the same. Victory required patience, cleverness, and an eye for opportunity.

Thus it was no wonder, Cara knew, that she’d taken to it so easily. She’d conquered no less than five galaxies in the past couple days, turning the board into a sea of red each time. Kahlan’s own victories numbered zero since her wins began piling up.

“You’re cheating,” the Arbiter pronounced, knocking one of Cara’s pieces over petulantly with the tip of a finger. Cara nearly took offense, but there was a smile on the woman’s lips.

“I was first in my class in tactical school,” she said, having no interest in keeping the pride from her voice. “We learned many ways to crush opponents at various scales.”

Kahlan cleared the pieces with a sigh. “And I thought I was teaching you how to play. Again?”

“I could share some tips, if you’d like.”

“None needed,” Kahlan said primly. “I know how you play now. All I need to do is turn your strategies against you.”

“Oh, but Arbiter.” Cara leaned forward, lifting an eyebrow, and her voice lowered meaningfully. “I have many more strategies for you where those came from. There might be a few at work even now.”

Kahlan bit her lip and breathed out through her nose. “Okay,” she said, as if reaching a decision a long time in the making. “Okay, I’m just going to ask.”

Cara’s tone turned innocent. “Ask what?”

The brunette stared demurely at a red piece held in her fingers. “You don’t mind, overmuch, that you were stranded on a planet with a woman and not a man…do you?”

Cara faked deep thought for a moment, pinning Kahlan with her gaze until she was fidgeting nervously with the piece. Then she said, “Are you asking me if I want to have sex with you?”

The piece fell to the metallic flooring with a spectacular clatter. Kahlan blushed hot and fast. “No,” she squeaked, then cleared her throat. “I mean, not strictly me. Just, you know. Do you…women?”

An amused smile curled Cara’s lips. “I’ve done my fair share of them, yes.”

Kahlan blinked at the turn of phrase. “Oh. What about, um.”

“Men?” supplied Cara. This was very entertaining. She’d never seen the cool-headed, always in control Arbiter come so undone.

Kahlan nodded.

“Yes, those too. And yourself?”

Blue eyes went wide, and she froze. Cara tried to look casually disinterested, but she was waiting anxiously with bated breath for Kahlan’s answer.

A drawn-out wail intruded on the tense moment, distant but still very loud. Both women visibly relaxed. “Did you figure out why he’s doing that yet?” Cara asked wearily.

Another plaintive yowl sounded from Sib somewhere else in the ship, and Kahlan waited until it was done to speak. “I think it’s mating season for his kind,” she said, a hint of sadness in her voice.

“Let me guess. They attract mates based on the annoyance of their caterwauling.”

Kahlan shook her head and picked up another piece from the table, turning it with her hands. “That’s actually not it. I think he’s just…sad. Lonely. Because he knows he has no one to try and attract, here.”

Cara frowned. “So how long is he going to be sad, then?”

“As long as he needs to be,” Kahlan snapped, voice like a whip, eyes drilling into Cara’s. Cara lifted her hands placatingly, palms forward.

“It’s not easy to sleep with that going on,” she said.

As if on cue, another wail drifted through the air. It was markedly different from the blood-chilling shriek she’d first heard from the creature, weeks ago. Kahlan dropped the piece and sat up straight, running a hand through her long hair with a sigh. Cara’s own hand twitched in jealousy. “I’m sorry,” said the brunette. “I just…empathize with him. More than a little.”

Cara nodded. Having spent so much time with Kahlan, she was somewhat acquainted with the Arbiter’s mannerisms and moods. Right now she had a feeling Kahlan would explain further without her having to say a word. She was not wrong.

“His species is nearly extinct,” Kahlan said softly. “Just like mine. They’re being hunted to death on their home planet in Sigma sector. For no good reason! Not for their fur, or venom, or anything else. They’re just being murdered because the locals think they’re demons or something. Superstitious, primitive people. They can barely speak the language of advanced planets.”

There was disgust in Kahlan’s voice. Cara’s brow furrowed; she hadn’t expected to hear such harsh words from Kahlan. “You hate them,” she said.

“They’ve earned it. They hate what they don’t understand; I’m sure they’d hate me too if I’d told them what I was. Sib has every right to be upset that he’s alone.”

“But you took him?” Cara put forth cautiously. “Away from his fellow furry monsters.”

Kahlan shook her head. “It’s complicated. Yes, he could be back home with his own kind, but there’s a greater chance he’d be slaughtered by now. Right after I took Sib, my contact on the planet told me they’d razed dozens of leagues of forest and killed thousands of them at once. Nobody knows how many are left.”

Well, that was a strangely familiar story. Cara weighed the moment carefully in her mind. She’d been working up to this confession since she first realized she was trapped on a planet with an Arbiter, of all people. It would only be a matter of time until she was found out. It was better this way—she was in control, here, at least. Not that there was ever a good time to die. “So,” she said casually. “How’d you end up dodging death yourself, what, eight months ago?”

Kahlan’s eyes met hers for the briefest of moments before she looked down. It was obvious she’d been expecting the question, possibly since the very beginning. “I was on a mission when the Annihilation happened. Arbiters almost always are; there’s lots of bad people in the system. That’s how some of us survived. Of course, a fraction of one percent of my planet’s population isn’t very many people.

“I heard the news over the Foundation Extranet. All the worlds that represented some form of large-scale resistance to the Foundation were destroyed at once. Dozens of them across the system, Nethria among them. They…called it a great purging. My people held ourselves to higher standards; we refused to compromise, and we burned for it.” Kahlan’s voice was deadly calm, unsettling Cara. “Asix,” the Arbiter called out suddenly. “What was the population of Nethria when it was destroyed?”

The smooth response came from the door panel nearby. “Three billion, four hundred seventy-five thousand, three hundred and twelve, Arbiter.”

Kahlan looked to the forgotten game between them. She pushed it to the side, as if it upset her. “Only one percent of Nethrian women have the Arbiter gene. Only one in ten of us actually take the oath and become Arbiters. A fourth of us were home when the Annihilation happened.”

Sib intruded once again, his sad, distant howl filling Cara’s ears. Kahlan closed her eyes for a moment as her tone changed to one of recitation. “As of one month ago, there are twelve hundred Arbiters left alive. Most are in hiding with what was once the vast ‘normal’ majority…there are only four hundred of my people left that aren’t Arbiters. That makes fourteen hundred women, two hundred men. Sixteen hundred Nethrians, Cara, total. Arbiters were once a fraction of a percent of our population. Now they’re seventy-five. Nobody knows what that, or the sex discrepancy, means for our future.” She looked at Cara, head tilted slightly. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t mention the location of our current sanctuary.”

Cara nodded, holding herself carefully. If she was to end her life with her next words, it would be on her terms. “I was there,” she said, voice slow and measured as she forced speech from her lips. Kahlan’s eyes turned hard. Cara continued. “I was the commander of the fleet tasked with your planet. We cloaked up and surrounded the equator. Then I gave the order that turned your home into a radioactive shell. It took four minutes for the missiles to reach the surface. From there, it was twelve seconds until everything was dead.”

Cara wasn’t used to feeling fear, but it was twisting in her belly now, making her pulse thump in her ears as she met Kahlan’s blue eyes. This woman was so beautiful when she was angry. And here, at last, they met; these two parts of this entire situation that had stayed separate in Cara’s mind until now. First, that Cara was very attracted to Kahlan, and second, that Cara had slaughtered Kahlan’s entire planet. But only the latter mattered now—these would be her last breaths as herself. “I was proud of receiving the assignment,” she finished firmly. “Once it was finished, I wasn’t proud anymore. But it was done all the same.”

Cara remembered it like it was yesterday. The humming main deck of her battlecruiser, the flagship of the fleet, Excelsior. The authority in her voice as she barked out the confirmation codes over fleet-wide comm. The feel of the fitted uniform on her skin as she stepped to the filtered front viewport, hands clasped behind her. The sight that greeted her as she watched the bright pulses of nuclear detonations cover the blue and green planet in a tight, systematic grid. But something changed in her, then, at that moment. She wondered what it felt like when one’s lungs and eardrums exploded from a pressure wave. If there was impossible pain for a split second while one’s body was vaporized by a speeding wall of all-consuming heat. What if that pain was multiplied by billions of people, and experienced by one person? The person responsible? Thousands of miles up, inside her sealed and sterile ship, the putrid stench of death suddenly filled Cara’s nostrils, sudden and strong, and she couldn’t shake it, couldn’t explain it. As a time to grow such a keen conscience, it was both fitting and not, but also five minutes too late to matter.

Presently, Cara reached over her shoulder and slid a hand to the back of her neck, under her hair. She’d worn a tight, long braid back then; a luxury only afforded commanding officers. Lopping it off at the shoulders was the first thing she did when going into hiding from everything she knew.

“So that’s what it was,” Kahlan said.

Cara blinked, and looked at her. She expected incomprehensible fury, dark and vengeful rage, and instead saw simple interest in clear eyes. “What was what?”

“I saw your mind, Cara; did you forget? Even without my power, it was obvious you were desperately hiding something. But that spot inside you that was locked away so tight…it terrifies you. You don’t know what to do with it, so you push it deeper.”

“You…analyzed me?”

“Comes with the territory,” Kahlan sighed. “Look, you don’t need to worry. I’m not going to kill you or destroy your mind. Even if you think you deserve it. I got my revenge already. From the people that were responsible for the orders you received. I’m at peace with what happened—that was very hard to do, and I won’t be letting you undo it.”

“Oh,” was all Cara could say for a moment. “What was your revenge?”

Kahlan stood up and made for the counter, pouring herself a cup of water as she spoke. “Have you heard of Dark Arbiters?”

“Of course. Those of your kind who serve only themselves.”

“It’s a temptation all of us face from the moment we first truly grasp what we’re capable of.” She turned to Cara and lifted her cup. “Do you want something?”

Cara slumped to the side on the table a bit. Her extremities were tingling. She’d been expecting death or something like it; her body had flooded her system with adrenaline. “How about something with a kick to it?”

Kahlan thought for a moment, then emptied her glass into the sink. “Good idea.”

Moments later, they settled back down together, short glasses half-full with the hardest liquor Kahlan had on board. It burned pleasantly as it slid down the back of Cara’s throat. “So,” Cara said. “You resisted the temptation.”

The brunette shook her head, taking a sip. “No. Well, I did up until that happened. I dropped off the grid after the Annihilation, kind of like you did, and did some research of my own. I had to destroy more than a few minds, but it was worth it when I found out the two Foundation Council members, a husband and wife—”

“Wait,” Cara interrupted. “You know about the Council?”

“No one can hide secrets from an Arbiter,” Kahlan said. “Especially me.”

Somehow, it didn’t come off as boasting. Cara nodded.

“Anyway, I discovered the Council members that championed this mass slaughter. A couple weeks ago you asked me if I’d ever caught someone’s eye in a crowd, remember? This man, Jacobs, was impossible to get close to. He lived with his wife on a class five colony for the elite; nearly everything is automated there, and I can’t arbitrate machines. But he traveled, often. A consequence of his position of power within the Foundation. All I had to do was dress appropriately and place myself in his line of sight while he was being escorted through a transport hub.”

“Dress appropriately?” prodded Cara. The Arbiter had already given her word she wouldn’t kill her. Might as well test the statement for steadfastness.

“Three inch heels and a pearl white dress, obscenely tight with a low neck. Barely covered my—wait.” Kahlan’s eyes narrowed. “Why is this relevant?”

Cara stored the mental image for later use. “Just curious,” she said. “So, transport hub?”

“Yeah. He looked at me, right through his bodyguards, and I had him in the space of a breath. He—”

Cara groaned as Sib’s yowl made Kahlan start. “Is there _anything_ we can do about that? You said he was lonely. Maybe he just wants…”

Kahlan tilted her head at Cara. “Wants what?”

“I don’t know. You to…hold him, or something.”

“I’ve tried that. Maybe you should try.”

Cara blanched. “No.”

“Why not?”

“We’ve been over this. He hates me, and has sharp claws?”

Kahlan stood, and took both their glasses from the table. “Come on. We're relocating this…whatever it is. Sharing time.”

“Can we not call it that? Can we not call it anything?”

Kahlan just smiled at her, tapped the door panel with her elbow, and started off down the corridor. Cara sighed and followed after her. She lingered outside Kahlan’s open door, watching as the brunette entered and scooped up her pet from the bedside, cradling him in her arms. Sib favored her with a petulant cry and paws pushing at her. Kahlan raised her brow at Cara, nodding to indicate she should enter. Cara hesitated, because all of this…was far too easy. “I don’t understand,” she said. She wasn’t sure where to put her hands, so they clasped behind her back. “I destroyed your home. You should be mad.”

Kahlan shook her head, swaying Sib in her arms like he was a young child. “By that logic, I should hunt down and kill everyone on all of those ships you mentioned. The people who actually pressed the buttons, maybe even the people who made the weapons. It doesn’t matter; I already killed the people who set everything in motion. That’s enough for me.”

“But all of us made a choice of our own,” Cara said, stepping forward enough to lean against the frame. “I could’ve disobeyed orders. I didn’t. None of us did.”

“Cara, I know you’re not completely blameless. But…listen. I’m trying very hard not to be angry with you. If you keep throwing what you did in my face, it’s going to become difficult. Right now I only feel pity for you—”

“I don’t need your pity!” snarled Cara. “I never asked for it; I don’t want it. You can keep it.”

Kahlan’s eyes turned hard again, like they did earlier. She dropped Sib to the ground and the blood cat promptly darted under the bed. That by itself was nearly enough to make Cara nervous. Kahlan stepped forward. Cara stood her ground.

“You have two options,” Kahlan told her. “Pity or wrath. Choose wisely, because you won’t survive the latter.”

Well, this was turning dramatic. “I just want you to understand,” Cara said.

“What, exactly?”

Both their voices had risen; Cara was nearly shouting. “That _I_ did it! Me! Not Foundation Council members. Only a coward lets someone else take their blame.”

“Better a coward than a fool! Only a fool would throw away an Arbiter’s forgiveness.”

Cara’s blood pumped hot in her veins. “How can you forgive me? You don’t even know me! You should kill me, not forgive me!”

Kahlan’s jaw clenched. She’d either run out of words or was holding them back, for she was silent, whole body visibly tight. Cara endured a moment of tension, then rolled her eyes and left. She heard Kahlan’s door hiss shut behind her.

****

The mid-day nightfall found Cara outside, seated on a stack of fuel containers under the wide base of the ship’s wing. It smelled like wet dirt out here—the scent had grown on her more than she’d ever admit. The rain poured straight down around her, thick enough to form a curtain where it slid off the wing’s edge. She couldn’t see past it. Cara sat forward and adjusted the goggles she’d found in the engine room. They were trying to self-calibrate, treating her eyes to a wide range of visual phenomena that reminded her of the first (and last) time she’d tried chewing Verovian fungus. Soon she gave up and reached to their side, clicking through the wavelengths manually. She slowed when stepping through infrared stages, and stopped when her surroundings were suddenly cast in an eerily bright light. The rain was barely visible, relegated to ghostly streaks in her vision. With the lack of it she saw as if it was clear daylight, though in monochrome.

Cara also saw things moving on the ground, out ahead of her.

She stood and moved to stand under the wing’s outer tip to get a closer look. They were small shapes, slow-moving, and there were a lot of them. It would seem she was right about their light avoidance; the shapes were splitting around the ship, staying thirty yards away from its dim exterior lights as they passed by it. They were all heading the same direction, as well: away from the middle of the bowl, out toward the rim.

So they weren’t the only things on this planet, after all. Cara sighed, gritted her teeth, and stepped out into the rain. She immediately regretted the decision. It was cold, and the thick drops pummeled her scalp and shoulders, soaking her to the skin in seconds. At least there was no wind—yet another curious thing. Kahlan had spoken of thunderstorms, utter violence in the form of powerful gusts and loud crashes and bright lightning. She was, of course, deprived of such an enchanting display; from the start, there had only been this. Wet. Gray. Muddy. Annoyance.

Now was not the time to be thinking of Kahlan. Cara wasn’t fond of thinking in general, but some of it clearly needed to be done—it’s why she initially ventured outside. Slowly, carefully, Cara stalked away from the ship and toward the moving shapes. Soon they revealed themselves to be small rodents of some kind. They had large, bulbous eyes, six scrabbling legs, and thick, long tails. Cara tilted her head as one made to approach her. She lifted her foot, prepared to stomp its guts all over the forest floor. But it paused, lifted its head, swayed from side to side, then turned and carried on with the rest of its kind. Cara then realized that, with her back to the ship, the thing had been confused by her shadow.

She sorely wished she was wearing the fitted gloves of her uniform that she was so used to. But for all Cara knew, this could be her only chance to grab one of the rodents for study—and possibly a cooked meal. She narrowed her eyes in the goggles. They were small. With no hesitation, she stepped forward and bent down, swooping two of the things up, one in each hand. They promptly squealed and struggled, but Cara squeezed threateningly and it soon subsided. The skin of their backs was rough against her palms, furless, and the bodies were cool, not warm. Cara frowned. Reptilian, then, not rodents. Hopefully they still tasted good. Hopefully they didn’t secrete poison in their skin. Hopefully she wouldn’t fall dead in five steps.

She winced on the fifth, but made it to the ship’s hatch under the wing with no heart failure or asphyxiation. Cara eyed out the location of the Arbiter’s quarters relative to the hatch, then kicked with her boot at the side of the ship where she thought the woman would likely hear it. She did it again for good measure, then four more times just in case. The creatures in her hands were still squirming. Cara brought one up to her face for a close look. Hopefully it wouldn’t spit poison at her. The thing simply craned its neck from the side to side, seeking escape. It was horribly, horribly ugly, mostly due to the flatness of its features barring bulging eyes. She and Kahlan, Cara realized, were likely most attractive things on the entire planet. She smiled.

The Arbiter in question opened the hatch and poked her head out. “What?” she demanded, not a little irate.

“My hands are full,” Cara said. “See?” She lifted her prizes to one of the amber lights lining the wing’s edge. She watched in satisfaction as Kahlan’s eyes grew comically wide.

Kahlan stepped out, full of questions. “What are those? Why are you wearing my…where did you find those things? Are they—”

“Arbiter,” said Cara. “Kindly calm yourself and fetch something to put them in.”

Kahlan’s lips pursed. She was likely debating whether she was deciding Cara to give her an order. With a look slightly glowering, the brunette turned back inside, leaving the hatch open and spilling bright light onto the scene. The creatures cried in protest at Cara’s sides until she stepped out of the beam.

Once they were inside the galley and the alien things secured in a large, transparent storage container, Cara stripped down out of her wet clothes to her underthings. She noticed with some amusement that in their soaked state they were nearly transparent, revealing shape and form of the hidden parts of her body. Looking at her from a couple paces away, Kahlan said nothing of it as she prepared to take a sample of tissue and whatever passed for blood from one of the creatures.

Cara toweled herself dry while Asix performed his customary analysis. “It is a cold-blooded vertebrate,” the computer pronounced pleasantly from the datapad. “It poses no danger. I do not detect any active defense mechanisms in its genetic code. This might suggest a lack of natural predators throughout its evolution, or a more passive mechanism such as staying hidden whenever possible.”

“Hopefully the former,” said Kahlan.

Cara nodded and asked a more important question, leaning on the counter as she addressed the datapad. “Is it edible? Would it taste good?”

Kahlan rolled her eyes. Asix answered, “It is in no way poisonous. The muscle of the specimen would likely have a taste similar to a common feathered fowl.”

Cara turned to Kahlan as she rubbed the towel against her hair. “Show me your frying pans.”

“Getting dressed first?”

“Do I have to?”

****

Stomach pleasantly full (and fully dressed), Cara ducked back outside. It was still dark, though the second dawn was imminent. Not that it meant much. A dull, dark gray instead of black.

She’d left the goggles on her makeshift seat while wrangling the last creature into the container. They were right where Cara had left them. She pulled them back on, crossing her arms as she inspected her surroundings again. The lizard-things were still moving en masse on their path around the ship, though their numbers had thinned considerably. Cara realized she might have been very lucky—if this was some kind of seasonal migration, she could have missed the creatures entirely had she not decided to do this when she did.

A voice behind her interrupted her thoughts, breaking through the dull hiss of heavy rain pelting soaked earth. “We’re not done.”

Cara stripped off the goggles, zipping up her jacket against the chill as she turned to see Kahlan stepping out to her. “With what?”

“I think you know.”

“Catching and cooking lizards? I was actually thinking of starting a lizard farm…”

“Cara.”

She gritted her teeth. “What?”

“We need to _address_ this,” Kahlan said. “We need to solve it. You devastated my planet and killed billions of people, and you can’t seem to decide whether or not you care, whether it matters to you. One moment you’re making…advances on me, then you’re challenging me to kill you out of guilt, then you’re merrily cooking small alien creatures for our dinner with not a _word_ about what happened.”

“I don’t do anything merrily,” said Cara. “It was good, right?”

“What?”

“Dinner.”

“Very. But that’s not what—”

“You wish me to stop making ‘advances’ then?”

“Cara! Will you be serious?”

She sighed. Kahlan was right; this needed to be dealt with once and for all. “Okay, so I destroyed your planet. Your home. And you wish to forgive me?”

“I—yes. It would make things rather easy for the both of us if you’d let me.”

Cara nodded. “I don’t understand, but…very well. You have to punish me first, though, or it won’t mean anything. I’ve heard stories about Arbiters and the pain they can cause with their special little brains.”

Kahlan’s brow furrowed. “No, I can’t perform a Flaying. I’ve never done it before.”

“Flaying,” Cara mused. “That does sound painful. Well, practice on me, then. What is it, exactly?”

“You know that nobody truly understands what Arbiters do, right?”

“Yes, yes. You’ve been boggling the system’s best scientists for years now and I’m sure you’re all very proud.”

“Well, not even _we_ understand our ability completely. It’s all very vague, centered on thought and will. There are those of us who believe that, given a powerful enough manifestation, an Arbiter could control the fabric of space with thought. It’s rubbish, though, nothing like that has happened before in our history.

“What we do know is that not every Arbiter is born equal in their ability to influence others. The weakest of us are only able to plant feeble suggestions, things easily decided against by anyone with a strong will. The more powerful Arbiters are able to directly control another’s actions, plant thoughts and ideas that feel like the person’s own, detect even the most skillfully delivered lies…and deliver pain unlike anything anyone has ever measured.

“Why didn’t you Flay these Councilors?” Cara wondered. “Surely you thought they deserved it.”

“It’s not a very stealthy thing to do,” said Kahlan. “The victim will likely collapse and convulse and scream and so on. What I did was make him go home, write a lovely note telling the Foundation I was coming after them, and then kill his wife and himself. He lasered both their throats open. There were pictures of the mess on the Extranet, but of course they left out the note.”

“Wait. Did you sign it?”

Kahlan gave her a withering look. “Of course not.”

Cara shrugged. “You were saying?”

“Flaying is supposed to be simple enough—I simply connect directly with the pain center of someone’s brain, and stimulate it.”

“That doesn’t sound that bad,” said Cara. She immediately regretted the words.

“Well, I’ve been told the interesting bit is that the human mind, when presented with bare sensory stimulation like that, usually tries to come up with a physical reason for it. So your brain will make you think you’re being sliced in half, having your skin peeled off, or something.” She grimaced. “I really…Cara, are you sure about this?”

“Absolutely.”

She wasn’t, of course, not anymore, but Kahlan didn’t need to know that.

The Arbiter stepped toward Cara resolutely. Cara experienced a sudden, strong desire to back away, maybe even to sprint into the rain. She steeled her muscles. Kahlan’s hand lifted to Cara’s throat, then slipped behind her neck to press two fingers to her spine. “Last chance,” she said softly.

Cara thought back to that moment. The stench of death clogging her nose. The crush of guilt and regret so powerful she’d nearly fallen to her knees. The realization that she belonged down there, among the countless dead. “Do it,” she said.

Cara’s world slowed to a crawl as darkness swirled in Kahlan’s eyes. The rain falling at their sides ceased, and became frozen, suspended in air. Kahlan blinked, and it seemed a lifetime for her lids to rise. When they did there was only blackness. And then Cara’s skin burst into flame.

It was paralyzing. She couldn’t move. The nerves in her skin shrieked in symphony as they were destroyed, overloading her mind with pain sickeningly pure. She couldn’t look away from Kahlan’s eyes, but if she could, she knew she would see her own flesh blackened, maybe charred with embers still burning, smoking, slipping from her bones in chunks. But no, now she was frozen. That vaguely powerful, all-consuming aching pain of limbs freezing to solidity. She never imagined it could hurt so badly; there was no mercy of numbness, not here. But this—Cara tried to scream as her limbs were shattered, torn from her torso all at once, leaving her body a stump. In a distant part of her mind, it wasn’t fair; there was less of her body to hurt, but the pain was still exceedingly plentiful.

Had her eyes closed? She tried to open them, but saw only velvet black. She tried to breathe, but couldn’t. Was she dead, then? No, she was standing on a field, somehow, and it was beautiful, and nothing hurt. Cara was confused, and her stomach nearly retched from the rapid change. Something was at her back, pressing, but she turned and there was nothing. A modern city shone in the distance, not quite in the horizon, and there was a lake, and to her side, a majestic mountain range with tall peaks and green-sloped sides.

Cara had no time to wonder further. The great city exploded in a massive ball of light and flame. The flash was blinding; she raised her hand to shield her eyes. A violent surge of red cloud mushroomed up, and Cara saw with dreadful clarity a wave of something flattening trees and grass. It was approaching her. Quickly. Then it was on her, and she was thrown back like a rag hurled from a fist. Her lungs burst mid-flight, and her eardrums exploded in turn. She landed hard, tumbling, sucking in breath—it was no use, her diaphragm was ruptured, and her lungs were nothing more than a bloody, damaged mass of flesh in her chest. The pain—it was unbearable. Cara wished her body would die. This was enough, wasn’t it? Blood trickled liberally from her ears, running down her neck. She would never hear again, she knew, and wondered if the shrieking sound currently splitting her head would stay with her the rest of her life. And she was indeed alive, somehow. It was cruel, this existence bathed—no, submerged—in pain.

She raised herself on all fours, then sat back on her haunches. Her neck was broken in the fall; it lolled to the side absent her will. Her sight revealed other pillars of fire in the distance, mushrooming in the upper atmosphere like this nearest. The sky was crimson red above her. Lightning crashed freely and regularly. Then she saw what would finally end this. The second wave, the blissful wall of heat setting flame to everything in its path—if it could be called such; trees flashed bright and turned charred black in the blink of an eye. It was coming for her. It was eating the ground once green in a line of flame, leaving behind black ugliness. Cara waited, arms loose at her sides, head forward, and when it hit her, everything that came before was nothing.

This wasn’t a flash at all. This was an excruciatingly slow possession of her body by heat so intense it vaporized blood and skin, leaving behind charred bone. It devoured her from front to back, started in her folded knees; Cara watched them disintegrate with a line of sparks and embers leading the way. The fringes of her hair burned in her vision. It began at the tip of her nose, then; melted her eyes, burned through her skull, her brain, but this wasn’t real, couldn’t be real, because she could feel everything even though her skull was empty. It burned through the rest of her with the same agonizing slowness, until at last, the tip of her toes met the same fate as the rest of her. Cara saw a bare human skeleton charred black on a field of the same fate, and at last, time resumed its proper pace. The skeleton fell, the bones clattering to disintegrate into gray dust. There was nothing left, save a shadow of a standing human imprinted on the ground.

Cara had no shape, no form, but the pain was somehow at its deepest, its most profound. For what she saw next was a cloud of similar gray dust, utterly massive in size, being carried and spread by the wind. There was nothing else left.

Then, Cara woke up. Her mind registered someone’s hand slipping from her neck, and a distant voice, and the sound of rainfall. She opened her eyes and saw a dark-haired woman hovering over her. There was something behind her. Something at Cara’s back. She shook her head, and realized she was laying down. The brunette’s brow pinched, and Cara blinked. She was shouting, apparently concerned.

Then Cara remembered what this woman had done to her. She remembered everything that mattered. The pain was still in her mind, like an echo fading far too slowly. She struck out with her fist, connecting with the woman’s jaw. The resulting crack snapped Cara’s senses back into place. The haze was gone, the pain was gone, and what was left was anger. No one should have to feel what she just did. Ever. She struck out at Kahlan again and again, but was unprepared for her blows to be countered, and then returned. Cara lunged up, lurched upright, and their fight carried them out into the rain. The endless, never-ending _rain_. All of it centered in Cara and boiled over—her frustration about this whole situation was poured into the strength of her left hook, the powerful kick at Kahlan’s side. There was a pause, and Kahlan made a fierce sight: light on her feet, hair hanging from her head in wet strands, eyes wide and heaving breaths as she lifted hands fisted tight. Cara’s lip curled. She let her training take over. She was, after all, first in her class for unarmed combat.

But Kahlan wasn’t going down, and once shock had left her, the brunette fought with equal determination. Her fist met Cara’s jaw, sending pain all-too-real blooming across her face. Another blow followed, and then she pulled Cara to the soaked and muddy ground. The fight turned to something decidedly less honorable: Cara’s hand found Kahlan’s hair, and Kahlan’s nails clawed at Cara’s breast. They scrabbled in the mud like children until Cara suddenly stopped. Kahlan had been shouting this whole time, but Cara’s blood was roaring too loud in her ears to hear it. “You asked for it!” she was yelling, over and over. “You asked…Cara?”

Cara was remembering everything else, now. Her mind felt decidedly frayed, tattered around the edges, and it was no wonder that was the word for it. But things were meshing together, and Cara laid still under Kahlan for a moment, letting the pieces reconnect. Kahlan shifted on top of her, peering down at the woman concernedly. Her wet hair dragged across Cara’s skin. Raindrops pelted Cara’s forehead. “I’m sorry,” Cara said, then repeated it louder. “I’m sorry.”

Kahlan looked relieved. “It’s…okay. I forgive you now, okay? Cara?”

Cara’s brow furrowed. She lifted a dirty hand, tracing the graceful curve of Kahlan’s jaw: pale skin warm and glowing with life against the darkness around them. “You’re infuriatingly beautiful,” Cara told her. Then she pulled Kahlan down into a kiss, her hand behind Kahlan’s neck, now. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting as she touched her lips to Kahlan’s, but it wasn’t this—a soft noise of surprise, and a light kiss back. Cara kissed her hungrily, greedily, because for all she knew this was a one time occurrence. Kahlan’s lips were soft, supple, inviting, and they both breathed heavy through noses rather than break this too soon. Cara’s jaw opened and Kahlan’s lips parted in answer. Mouths locked together, Cara’s tongue tasted Kahlan’s. The brunette rolled them suddenly and it was a miracle no one’s tongue was bitten, but Cara ended up on top and she was fine with that. She plied all of her skill, outside here in the filthy mud, and nothing mattered but coaxing more of these incredibly soft moans from the perfect creature below her.

Hands cupping Cara’s cheeks, Kahlan’s tongue explored Cara’s mouth and Cara’s whole body was growing warm from it, some places more than others. Kahlan’s leg shifted, bending up between Cara’s, and Sib chose that exact moment to loose an earsplitting shriek from behind them. Cara lifted her head and her lips missed the warmth of Kahlan’s own immediately. For her part, Kahlan’s eyes shot wide and she craned her neck up. “Sib?” she shouted. “I’m fine, thank you!”

An answering yowl sounded decidedly disgruntled to Cara. Kahlan looked up at Cara guiltily and removed her hands from Cara’s body. “Can you…”

“Yeah.” Cara rolled off of her, flat onto her back, arms spread wide, eyes closed against the pelting rain. She sighed. It wouldn’t take long to cool off like this. And she really needed to cool off.

She heard Kahlan’s wet footsteps, then she heard Kahlan scolding Sib and smiled. Kahlan hadn’t appreciated the interruption, either. But this game had to be played very carefully. A moment later, it was with some consternation that Cara realized she was still smiling. She contorted her face, scrunching her mouth, which fell back into an even wider grin. She cracked an eye open toward the ship; Kahlan wasn’t in sight, but the hatch was wide open, its inviting light spilling out. Cara fell back and allowed herself one relieved huff of laughter. She hadn’t felt this since she was a child. She felt absolved, like she’d escaped from the countless wrongs of her past. The crushing weight that had slammed into her with the rebirth of a conscience was…gone.

Cara sighed and pulled herself to her feet. “Ow,” she muttered. Kahlan had scored a hit somehow; her hip was bruised and after checking her temple, there was a tender spot there, as well. She trudged back to the ship through the mud. Once inside, she stripped every bit of clothing from herself, right down to the skin, and left the filthy pile by the sealed hatch. She padded naked around the corner to see that Kahlan’s door was open. She could hear the shower running. A quick glance revealed Sib nowhere in sight.

Cara stalked to the door of Kahlan’s little bathroom. It was cracked; steam rolled out in clouds near the top. “Showering?” Cara shouted.

“Yeah,” Kahlan yelled back. “What else would I be doing?”

Cara slid the door open a bit more. It squeaked a bit; Cara winced, then cleared her throat. “Can I come?”

“No,” Kahlan screamed. “No you may not! Shut the door! Cara!”

“Suit yourself,” said Cara. “I’ll be waiting out here. I’m naked, by the way.”

With that, she tapped the door shut and took a seat on Kahlan’s bed, trying not to feel hopeful.

****

Kahlan felt no guilt about taking her time in the shower. To say that she felt confused would be an understatement. There were many things that bore thinking on: injuries needed tending, and then there was…

Kahlan sighed, resting her forehead on the shower wall, letting the hot spray wash over her back. There was no escaping it. She wouldn’t be able to think straight until she tended to this more pressing problem. After peeking out to make sure Cara had truly closed the door, Kahlan widened her stance and rested her back against the wall. It had been a long time since she’d felt this so intense. The fresh memory of Cara’s mouth on hers, the way her hands felt on Kahlan’s skin, possessive and full of the promise of pleasure…

Kahlan sent a trembling hand down over her belly, gasping when her fingertips found the folds of her sex. She bit her lip and her other hand came to cup her breast, fingers rolling the already-tight bud at its peak. Liquid warmth was readily pooled between her thighs; all she had to do was open the gates and let it loose. She stroked her sex with the motions she remembered, and it felt _good_. Kahlan’s back arched, and she moaned, hips pushing against her hand. Why didn’t she do this more often? What had it been…months? Years? Since she’d felt this kind of pleasure?

And there was nothing wrong with this, surely; a little test. Kahlan cleared her throat, closed her eyes, and imagined Cara naked. It wasn’t at all difficult. She imagined her own body pressed flush to Cara’s, imagined the warmth and the softness and the smirk on Cara’s lips as her blonde hair tickled Kahlan’s face. And yes, that…her breasts crushed to Cara’s, Cara’s fingers stroking her sex just like this, and venturing inside, which Cara would surely do…Kahlan groaned, arousal flooding her fingers as she slipped two inside her sex. She panted, head raised and chin out, letting her hips meet the rocking movements of her hand as she found an exquisite release. Her legs weakened, and her hand smacked the shower wall in search of purchase. It was a startlingly loud noise but that didn’t deter Kahlan; she finished determinedly, and fully.

After a thousand heartbeats and a shaky sigh, Kahlan lifted her hand from her legs and rinsed it clean in the warm spray of the shower. Well. That answered _that_ question. Kahlan’s body would not at all mind her being intimate with Cara. The question remained—should she? And really, why would she?

****

Legs crossed on Kahlan’s bed, Cara petted Sib while she waited for Kahlan to emerge. She had not the faintest idea why the animal suddenly decided he liked her, but strangely enough, he’d trotted in and curled up next to her thigh shortly after Cara took her seat. Well, there was one possibility—that Sib had watched the entire exchange outside, likely from the hatch. That he’d seen Kahlan hurt Cara unprovoked, and the following scuffle, and perhaps judged something of what had happened. Not even Kahlan knew exactly how much intelligence hid behind his glittering eyes. Given that, it was likely that he feared for Kahlan’s life once Cara was…on top of her. That or he disapproved of sharing his substitutive mate. Cara smirked down at the blood cat. “It’s just a matter of time, now,” she told him solemnly.

He yawned, and a soft rumble began sounding from somewhere deep in his body. Kahlan said he did that when he was content around someone he trusted. Cara took it as a challenge. “I mean it,” she said as she stroked his fur.

Kahlan chose that moment to emerge from the bathroom, wrapped in a large towel. “Oh,” she said, pausing one step out of the doorway. “You really are naked.”

Cara looked down at herself. “Yeah. My dirty clothes are by the hatch.”

“I see. Thanks, I think.” Her brow furrowed as she quickly circled around Cara. “Is that…”

“Getting a good eyeful, Arbiter?” Cara purred.

“Sib…likes you now?” asked Kahlan in disbelief.

Cara shrugged, giving him a rub behind the ears. “Don’t know why. So what happened in there? Sounded like you fell over.”

Kahlan pursed her lips and crossed her arms under her breasts. “I—nothing,” she said. The quick blush on her cheeks, on the other hand, said it was something. Cara knew what _she_ wanted to believe. “So, about what happened…”

“Kahlan, can we let the whole thing rest? It’s over as far as I’m concerned.”

The brunette nodded. “Good. I’m just…I’m sorry, I should’ve warned you about what happens afterward. It was a bit of a shock even to me, though. I wasn’t in your head for even a second.”

Cara looked at Sib, and Sib looked back. “It felt like a lifetime,” Cara said.

****

Before the second dawn lightened the sky, they managed to secure a dozen of the small lizards, splitting them among three of the breathable containers in the darkest corner of the engine room. Cara’s lizard farm was a reality. Kahlan insisted on giving them plants to eat; Cara decided it was fine to fatten them up a bit. “There’s something that might bear thinking about,” she said as the door panel hissed shut behind them. They turned the corner before Kahlan responded with a hum. “Those lizards were all heading the same direction. What if they were escaping something?”

“Like what? You said you didn’t see anything bigger than them, or even different.”

“What do we know is in that direction?” prodded Cara.

“Lots of jungle-ish things, and big plants.”

“And?”

“A lake?”

Cara nodded gravely. “What has it been doing for weeks now?”

Kahlan stopped short. “Raining. Cara, a flood?”

“Maybe. I’m thinking we should check.”

Now that she’d said it, the concern seemed immediate and real, and she shared in Kahlan’s urgency as they once again dressed to go out. The hooded plastic cloaks worked miracles against the rain, something Cara had doubted when Kahlan first produced them.

“I have an idea,” Kahlan said, once they were outside and walking. “We should check to the side, walk and see if we find a stream, then follow it to the lake. If you’re right, we won’t have to go far.”

It was a sound plan, better than striking off straight east and hoping for the best. Cara lifted the datapad—well insulated against the elements—and tapped in the course change, then pointed to her left. “North. That way.”

Kahlan nodded, and they set off. Given the even altitude, the vegetation stayed the same as that of their crash site—behemoth trees spaced well apart and little in the way of underbrush or other foliage. Just flat ground that often sucked at their boots. It wasn’t long before they came across confirmation of Kahlan’s theory. She wasn’t at all jubilant as they walked to the fast-flowing stream’s edge. Instead she looked to Cara. “This wasn’t here before?”

Cara consulted the datapad; one of them had passed through here while searching for floral sustenance. She shook her head, and stared the flowing water. Several feet across, it looked well established and could nearly pass for a river were it a little deeper. What was more worrisome, this looked like far more water than could be explained by rainfall over the area from here to the rim. “There might be waterfalls at the rim,” said Cara grimly. “For all we know, this bowl we’re in could be a drain for hundreds of square miles.”

“We should keep moving,” said Kahlan.

The trek continued in silence as they followed the stream’s path east. It was relatively straight, only bending around the trunks of trees two dozen feet across. They hadn’t gone this far east while searching for food; soon, they began seeing the telltale changes in foliage that Cara remembered from their first and only descent to the lake. And then, abruptly, all at once, they came upon the waterline. “Not good,” muttered Cara.

“Not at all,” said Kahlan.

The lake had grown…considerably. Some quick work on the datapad revealed that, if the water level rose to the same height all around the bowl, its area had expanded by a factor of over two hundred. It now took up two thirds of the bowl, making the crash site less than a quarter of a mile from the waterline.

Cara stared out at the forest swallowed by water. It was unreal, eerie, the way trees were increasingly buried beneath the rippling, reflective surface as they looked further out. The angle of descent was steeper, here, but it was almost out of sight that she spotted the very top of a tree poking its leafy head from the water.

Kahlan, for her part, was looking down at her feet, where small waves were lapping at her boots. “We have to leave the ship,” she said.

“I told you we might—”

Kahlan whirled on Cara, eyes threatening more than words ever could. Cara simply crossed her arms. “Maybe it’ll stop raining.”

The Arbiter sighed. “I won’t be counting on it. Look up at the trees here. See that band where the trunk changes color?”

“Yeah, I noticed that a long time ago.”

Kahlan ignored her jibe. “I think that’s a waterline from past wet seasons.”

“Oh, that’s really not good.” Cara looked up. If the lake actually did rise that high, the entire ship would be underwater. There was no telling how much time they had left.


End file.
